Verified by 
Key points
- Maps are the world, annotated.
- Our brains process print and digital differently—print is tactile, while digital is cooler and less engaging.
- A print map can be an experience, while a GPS is functional—it helps us get there, but we’re not sure how because we don't think about it.
“That’s the mountain we’re going to drive up,” I told my husband, pointing to the snow-capped peak outside of Tucson, Arizona. I’d read online reviews of Mt. Lemmon—the scenic drive from desert cacti to pine-filled mountain, with a restaurant and ice cream store at the top. It was a sunny February morning as we jumped into our rental car. We wore cotton shirts but threw our coats and hats into the backseat. I set my GPS for Mt. Lemmon and headed through the city to the foothills and to the mountain highway, following a row of cars going for a Sunday drive.
Then I looked to my right and saw, in the distance, the snow-capped mountain I thought we were climbing.
“I don't think we’re doing what I thought we were doing,” I said. “If that’s Mt. Lemmon over there, we are sure not climbing it,” I said.
My husband looked across at the mountain, then back at the road. Unless a magic skybridge appeared, we were not going to get up that mountain this way.
“Well, we’re climbing some mountain. And it’s a nice drive,” he said. Very Zen.
As we drove, we saw signs for Summerhaven, the town at the top of Mt. Lemmon, so we knew we were on the right road, but it was just in a different place than we’d thought. That other mountain got farther and farther away. We were out for the drive, so it wasn't the biggest deal in the world. Still, it would have been good to know where we were.
We’d been in Tucson for more than a week and I was lost most of the time, despite normally having a good sense of direction. One problem was the city sits in a valley surrounded by mountains, with a bright sun that consumes the sky, so it was difficult to use physical clues to find my way around. The other problem was far bigger: I was relying on my smartphone’s GPS rather than the print maps I usually devour.
The cognitive effects of print versus digital
I’ve long been fascinated with maps—they are the world, annotated. I can lose myself in lines and dots and dashes to see one city in relation to another, where the mountains start and the desert ends. If I’d used a print map, I would have seen how Mt. Lemmon rises to the northeast of town, Mica Mountain farther east, and I would have known I was going up the first and looking across at the second.
Our brains process print and digital differently. Print is tactile--we touch it, feel it. Printed maps encourage us to follow roads with our fingers, which increases comprehension. Even unfolding and refolding the map (good luck!) increases our focus on its content, which in turn improves our retention of that information. Print creates memory, while digital is ephemeral.
Viewing printed data requires our brains form a cognitive map, putting information about an object into the context of its surroundings, connecting the two. We then understand how this road leads to that city, and what happens in between. It can also encourage us to go the more scenic route, rather than the quicker route. To enhance our adventure.
Printed maps challenge our brains, create an experience
A print map can be an experience, while a GPS is largely functional—it helps us get there, but we’re not sure how because we don't have to think about it. The voice on the dashboard processes the information for us and has a hissy fit when we try to forge our own path, telling us in a robotic panic to “proceed to the route, proceed to the route.”
If we want simple, quick directions, a digital map will do. But if we want to understand the geography of the region, if we want to really know where we are in relation to where we’d been and where we might go and what surrounds us, a paper map is a must. It is a tiny expression of our world. People who love to observe the geography of a region, like me, are most likely to appreciate printed maps over digital.
When we got to the top of Mt. Lemmon, we stopped for lunch at a restaurant with a view of the ski slopes, then walked through the snow past colorful cottages to get fresh fudge. Our GPS showed us the way just fine, but I wish we had stopped at a visitor’s center and gotten a foldout map, so we could see how the Catalina foothills lead to Mt. Lemmon and also encircle Saguaro National Park, just a few miles away. There’s Tucson below and Nogales, Mexico, farther to the south. And close by there’s Marshall Gulch, Butterfly Peak, and Willow Canyon, names with the flavor of the old and new west. We had an enjoyable adventure either way, but with a printed map, our brains would have had a creative workout and our experience would have been a bit deeper.
And we’d have known where we were.
