A Google Maps error has been sending tourists seeking “Mt. Rushmore, SD” to the wrong location for nearly five years now. Storm Mountain Center, a retreat center located some 13 miles from the real Mount Rushmore, has repeatedly asked Google Maps to update the Mt. Rushmore address. But whatever fixes proved temporary for unknown reasons – and as of this writing, the address is still wrong.
Eventually, the center has resorted to installing a large sign at the front of their driveway instructing travelers that their electronic devices are wrong about Mount Rushmore’s location. Despite this, guest services manager Ashley Wilsey told the Kansas City Star that she regularly encounters a near-constant flow of tourists mistakenly navigating to the center.
Although Google Maps is fast becoming the ultimate authority on navigation, the program is proving vulnerable to mistakes and hackers with results that at times can be catastrophic.
One of the latest blunders involved a company accidentally bulldozing the wrong house due to faulty Google Maps directions. Google took responsibility for the maps error. In this case, two different houses were shown as being in the same location, a Google spokeswoman told CNN.
Then there was the case of a seemingly random Wisconsin murder that investigators say might be because of a Google Earth mix up. Police say that they discovered that the murdered couple’s address was switched with another house on the online map – that of the president of a local bank who had received death threats. In 2010, Nicaragua blamed an accidental invasion of Costa Rica on incorrect Google Maps information.
These cases shed light on the software’s susceptibility to errors and hacks. Google Maps is built on layers on information obtained from satellite images as well as photographs taken by Street View cars, which have driven and photographed more than 7 million miles of roads. Google also crowdsources location information through Map Maker, which allows users to directly update local addresses and details. An unknown number of people are employed by the company to comb through these maps for inaccuracies.
Then there’s the human error element, such as the case of American tourist, Noel Santillan, who drove six hours in the wrong direction in Iceland through wintery conditions because of a small spelling error he entered into Google Maps.
For those misguided Mount Rushmore tourists, even a large metal sign instructing them to turn around couldn’t deter them from total GPS obedience. Some researchers have suggested that GPS dependence is becoming more and more common and are worried about unforeseen effects. Are we collectively losing our learned sense of direction?
Neuroscience studies suggest that yes, Google Maps and GPS systems may indeed be negatively impacting our brains.
Research at McGill University compared the brains of GPS versus non-GPS users and found that non-GPS users had more gray matter and higher functionality in their hippocampuses than those that relied on their devices. The hippocampus is responsible for memory and spatial navigation, the latter of which uses visual cues to create a cognitive map that assists with directionality. An earlier study showed that London taxi drivers, well-versed in the complex map of the city, had much larger hippocampuses than non-taxi drivers. There is also some correlation between those with a more developed hippocampus and lower chances of Alzheimers.
Veronique Bohbot, a neuroscientist who worked on McGill’s GPS study, suggests that we limit our GPS use to new destinations only and attempt to build up our cognitive maps by navigating to frequently visited destinations on our own, she said in an article on Phys.org.
Given recent errors, our memories might wind up being more accurate than Google Maps itself.
