"Getting off the beaten path" is as much about expectations as places

"'Getting off the beaten path' is still a negotiation (even if a contrarian one) with the pre-formed idea of a place, rather than with the place itself. And soon enough, it becomes incorporated into the approved, expected experience: witness the advertisements for SUVs and sporting gear that now use that phrase as a slogan. Indeed, the presumption of location-aware technologies is that place can be a sort of consumer artifact, a packaged item in a showroom awaiting evaluation and purchase."

–Ari N. Schulman, "GPS and the End of the Road," New Atlantis, Spring 2011