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.

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.