The fact is that people don’t know how to read maps anymore. I love maps,” said Professor Bradford Parkinson, according to Yahoo News.
It’s a concern shared by Brad Green, who, along with his partner Petra Thoms, owns the shop World of Maps in Ottawa.
Green estimates that the shop, which has run a successful business since 1994, has thousands of maps in stock, and tens of thousands more in its electronic library, ready to be printed.
“There is a bit of a risk of it becoming a lost skill,’ Green said of map reading. “And I think what you lose is the big picture.”
What a hyper-local phone map doesn’t necessarily give you is perspective, Green explained. For example, if you look from the Arctic Circle down, Canada borders on Greenland; if you look at a map of North America, Point Pelee, Ont., runs along the same latitude as Northern California.