W
e found our way to E---- Falls using a paper map.
You go in one end of google maps and you come out the other, blinking, into the daylight. Google maps is a tunnel, in which every turn is a threat, a departure from the optimal. There is One True Way ahead of you, and there may be tolls.
Using a paper map is flying. Choices unfold along the creases, and funny names bubble up along the blue lines of riversides and interstates alike. Your navigator is miles in the sky, scouting airborne the path far ahead -- they are so high up, the minor streets and byways disappear in dizzying perspective.
We tell our algorithms what we want, and they obediently fetch it for us, clean and untainted by extraneous information. They are fast, effective, powerful. They are wind tunnels, that demand our mental form become streamlined and sleek to endure their speed. But in living a human life, we find that our goals change as we stumble across new experiences that we did not and could not expect at the outset. Googling a word's definition will supply you with the answer you thought you wanted; but cracking open a dictionary exposes you to hundreds of words whose definitions you never thought to investigate in the first place, on your way to your initial end. The journey, riddled with impurities, changes you, redirects you, expands you.
This is the paradox of paper. Its inefficiency is its greatest treasure. By forcing you to walk the difficult path, it exposes you to that which will save you.