In reply to UKC Articles:
Interesting article. I can see both sides.
Recently I've been using a sat nav program to navigate road trips from one place to another. Pretty amazing technology with lots of advantages over a map. For instance if a road is blocked with traffic you can just go a different way and the computer automatically works out a new route for you.
But what I've noticed is that you can just plug thing in and listen to the directions oblivious to to where you really are. The map is very close up so you don't get any sense of where you're heading. You can end up making a long journey without having much of a clue as to where you are in the country. So I think that is definitely a loss, as are the skills of route planning and map reading.