Is Google Maps Changing Our Behavior?

Earlier this week BBC News published an interesting feature on the ways Street View in particular, and Google Maps in general, impacts how pedestrians navigate a city. On the one hand, there are people like communications scholar John Haas of Northwestern, who told BBC he likes to eliminate the element of surprise in his travels. On the other hand, there are those like British psychologist Alexander John Bridger, who feared that people risk losing "chance moments" of interaction with their surroundings:

The ubiquity of Google Maps — exemplified indirectly by the uproar over Apple's awful version, which already seems in the distant past — is quite astonishing considering its youth. Now whether you agree with the perspective of Haas or Bridger, above, depends of course on your own individual values (and probably your age). But what's pretty clear from the behavioral literature is that, for better or worse, a change does occur in the minds of people who rely on mobile G.P.S. devices to find their way.