By Philip Pearlman of Prime Cuts

There’s a problem with the quantified self. 

It might not be a deal breaker but it’s a factor to consider or we risk dulling our sense of internal experience.

Sometimes, when I use Google Maps, I get where I’m going but I don’t know where I am.

This happened recently when I went on vacation with my family. I was using Google Maps and I got good directions but as we drove around my wife and kids got a better sense of where everything was.

They were paying attention to the environment, while I was paying attention to the app.

We have a natural sense of direction that perceives and integrates environmental cues, in part, without us even being aware of it.

We are amazing creatures and it’s awesome how we’ve evolved to do this kind of information processing automatically…. read more