A behavioral science paper gave an example of the kind of digital mishap that simply would not have happened twenty years before. It starts with a young woman losing her phone in a bar, late at night. She decides to walk home. She realizes she is not certain of the way, but since she normally relies on Google Maps on her phone, she has suddenly become geographically illiterate. She finds a telephone booth, but she doesn’t know the number of a taxi company, nor can she summon an Uber or a Lyft. She cannot remember her parents’ number either, familiar though it once used to be. All told, her
...more
