question is NOT what's easier, but rather necessity.

he were driving. had a plain old 16" (ish) globe sitting on the center console
of his satellite sebring. soooo, methinks we can all agree gps, although a
nice invention, is NOT a necessity.

problem is that too many people rely so much on technology that they lose,
or never learn the skills in the first place, to allow them to continue on their
tour (or survive!) without them. seems every month or so there's a story
'bout how some fool followed their gps directions into the dessert to a dead
end and died, or attempts to drive over a non-existent bridge. i mean, it
sure LOOKS like there's no bridge over thet thar canyon, but mr. gps says
go for it...........

just look at what's happening here in our china (since i've been oconus for
the past 12 years).

i live in a small town with fewer than 12 traffic lights. the few times i've
ridden in a local's car, they have been unable to find the entrance to the
expressway 3 turns and 2km away.....without gps directions.

our department outing to a local lychee orchard was a total cluster, with
many of our office workers unable to find a village 8km from town. none
of them carry paper maps.

i'll grant you paper maps are not a panacea......chinese in general are
unable to read maps, so maybe i'm comparing apples to water buffalo.

but back to technology..........with the prevalence of sms texting and
online chat.....many chinese have lost the ability to write. not surprising
when you consider the language has something like 90,000 non-phonetic
characters! it's not that their writing becomes sloppy or indecipherable;
they forget what strokes, or how many strokes in a character. in english,
you can spell out a funetik uhproksimayshun and people will be able to
understand. in chinese, if one dot or slash is missing/added/misplaced,
then you've either written a completely different sounding werd, or
nuthing at all. there's also a lack of imagination (creativity is stifled, with
many years spent learning thousands of characters) with the inability to
recognize what that character should be. now add in the millions who are
unable to use a chinese dictionary (a veeeeery complicated process!), and
you've got a civilization on the verge of zombie apokalips.

and unfortunately, the times when gps would have been really awesome,
like in parts of cambodia and laos, there is no gps. sure, your satellite
phone might get a signal, but there are no readily available electonic
maps. the dirt roads and tracks and trails are not shown on google
maps, which in portions of the world are filtered by the local gub'mint
anyways. you could download gmap beforehand, but many of the
roads shown do not exist, and the ones that are aren't. paper maps
if you can find them may not be in english, may not be updated, may
not have correct village names, but.....

gps is yesterday's compass. how many folks in ancient times went
for a walk deep in the forest, got lost and died. they weren't worried,
for they carried a compass......but no map.