When we talk about the the effects of GPS on both society and the individual, I am reminded of the many changes that technology has wrought prior to GPS. One that I recall, from a long-time back TV documentary, talked about how late Middle Ages scholars would train their memories for fact retention. They would create a mental house with rooms and tie the fact to a given room. The development of paper over vellum and the printing press gave a tech alternative to that laborious ability.
There are many other such tech over-rides and obviously more so in recent history. Slide rules, which replaced earlier devices and training, have completely lost out to calculators and computers. Yet, there are those amongst us who still keep those skills somewhat greased, if only for our own pleasure.
Still, when I look at our cell phone and GPS world, while I may feel a pang for lost abilities, I will still make max use of the new ones. The ability to see what fuel prices are when your gauge reads very low and then to navigate to the cheapest is a comfort when I am traveling in strange country.
Long ago I used a slide rule for extraction of roots.
When the calculators became cheap, I moved on.
Years later I had a trainee preparing for an exam, someone said he needed to know how to do longhand root extraction.
I vaguely recalled a trial divisor, and some interpolation???
It made my brain hurt!!!