Customer Reviews

You Are Here: Why We Can Find Our Way to the Moon, but Get Lost in the Mall

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Scientists often attempt to write books for the "intelligent layperson." Such books frequently miss the mark because the authors aim either too high or too low and their writing is pedestrian. Ellard nails it. This is not a book that you will buy and put off reading. Start it and you will be hooked. Ellard manages to be both funny and informative. This book will appeal to both spatial idiots like me who are forever losing their way and competent navigators. After you read the book, you will amaze your friends and neighbors with your new-found erudition on a host of topics, ranging from animal navigation to architecture. You may also amaze your spouse and children with your new path-finding skills.

Colin Ellard has written a delightful book that persuasively stakes a claim for the primacy of space in human cognition. The first half covers some of the scientific research into the psychology of space and is well informed by Ellard's solid working knowledge of neuroscience, cognitive science, ethology, animal behavior, and evolutionary psychology, as well as by his first-hand knowledge of a number of specialty areas within each of these fields. The book's second half takes up questions about interacting with our spatial environment that are of considerable practical significance. For example, what happens to us as we become disconnected from our natural world? What makes for psychologically satisfying living and office spaces? Why do some city green spaces work, but others do not? Might social networks that we establish on the Internet (e.g., on Facebook) facilitate greater interaction with the real spatial environment? How about the increasing availability on the Internet of virtual reality? You may disagree with some of Ellard's views on these issues. For example, I believe he's overly optimistic if not completely delusional that navigating in cyberspace via virtual reality, Google Earth, and the like will get us back out there exploring and playing in the real world. But I can guarantee that you will never be bored. And too you will likely learn all sorts of things that you may never before have heard of, in my case, isovists, Second Life, proxemics, sound sculpturing, calm technology, to mention just a few. Accessibility poses no problem. The writing is engaging, often humorous, and pitched at the right level for the layperson. In short, this book is an instance of popularization of science at its very best.

You Are Here: Why We Can Find Our Way to the Moon But Get Lost in the Mall comes from a psychologist who discusses how humans have found their way traditionally and how this directional sense has changed with the advent of new technologies to assist, and wider global approaches to directions. Despite all innovations humans still get lost - even going to places very familiar. You Are Here: Why We Can Find Our Way to the Moon But Get Lost in the Mall examines how people think about space, environment, and the process of mental maps used for everyday direction. Both psychology and general libraries will find it a lively, fun read.

This book was somewhat interesting while it was exploring and explaining how people and animals orient themselves in space (visually and otherwise), although I expected somewhat more than a few anecdotes about how and why people become disoriented.

But about two-thirds through the book, the author detours into an all-too-conventional diatribe against suburbs/exurbs, automobility, and urban sprawl. And while these are worthwhile topics in themselves, it's an awkward fit with the rest of this book-- the first two-thirds are about science (not politics), and this makes the remainder seem excessively and inappropriately political.

The effect was like going to a museum or concert, only to have the docent or musician lurch into partisan politics ("But of COURSE we all know that **** is an idiot!")-- even if the political discussion is interesting, it's the wrong place and the wrong time. And, the political discussion here didn't seem all that original or interesting-- if you want to read this viewpoint, you'd do better to read something by James Howard Kunstler.

And it's a shame-- this reader is left with the sense that this could have been a much better book.

This book has several interesting facts and figures contained in it. I was looking for a book on geography related and how we treat the world around us. After an Amazon search I came on this book.

It was a pretty good read. At times it reads a little like a text book and drags a bit. However, some of the thoughts and facts about the way humans look and react to everyday environments makes it interesting. Everything from how city design can affect our daily decisions, how we can predict where busy intersections will be years from now, to how casino's are like website designers trying to lure you in and keep you there.

Overall, this is not a book I'd give my wife but something I'd bring up at the dinner table.

This was a fascinating read--especially the sections comparing human and various animal navigators, especially the desert ants.

The author summarizes in the last sentence of the last chapter a major theme repeated throughout the book (particularly in the second half): "Our future together depends on finding ways to understand and to feel the deep truth of [the] connection between person and place." "Locateness" is a fundamental gift that the periphery gives us"--it is attractive and restorative to the human psyche. Contact with nature and with natural space is good for our mind because we have a deep genetic connection and attraction (biophilia) to the natural world. And our inability to make connections between different types of space - the indoors and the outdoors, the urban and the rural- has a basis in the makeup of the human mind and the way that we engage with space.

Humankind's increasing failure to live up to this picture paints a bleak future in the mind of the author. For example, because spaces are completely separated by enclosures, we have difficulty connecting the warm security of our living rooms with the toxic foam floating down a river in the parkland (or the litter we throw out on the ground by the fast food restaurant) just outside of our doors. Remote control garage doors openers allow commuting homeowners to drive directly from the office to the interior of their living space without making any contact with the outside world. But I found myself sometimes challenging this hypothesis: are things really so bleak? And are the fixes he proposes all good ones?

In the discussion of virtual reality Ellard notes some important issues. "We are surprisingly quick to accept virtual spaces such as chasms or cliffs as the real thing." Dual awareness, similar to lucid dreaming, is the norm. What longer term chronic exposure to highly immersive virtual settings will result once "Avatar" like helmet-based virtual reality scenarios find themselves in peoples' homes in a few short years? Understanding how we are affected by these transformations in how we live in space is perhaps no less urgent than the challenges presented by climate change. We know from history that, all calls for prudent forethought notwithstanding, whatever we can make, we will make. So we need to try to anticipate and influence outcomes for the better while we still have the chance.

Nevertheless, some of the proposed fixes to getting reconnected with spaces in this book seem a little far-fetched. In order to reaffix ourselves to outdoor spaces, we should intensively utilize virtual reality and so-called "ubiquitous computing" (the so-called inverse of virtual reality, which grounds us to the larger environment by monitoring in the background selected variables in a "gentle" way that do not demand our full attention). For example, the author's laboratory, RELIVE (Research Laboratory for Immersive Virtual Environments), has as a goal the design virtual structures whose size and shape adapt over time to reflect the preferences and interest of the observer, as measured by their movements and physiological state. They are even brainstorming how to design responsive architecture-- virtual buildings that can sense movements and even the physiology of their occupants, adjusting their properties accordingly to yield maximal comfort. In order to save humanity and get a fresh fix on reality, in order "to guard against the scary image of the future of living in ways functionally equivalent to brains in jars jacked into computer terminals", we must reassert the importance of the "where" into our lives" by proactively using newly available and emerging technologies like GPS, Google Earth, devices which emit different sounds in different places, and so called "geo-coding" techniques to tag our activities, snapshots, phone calls, and blogs with precise latitude and longitude information in order to re-root us to reality.

In the area of personal application, it seems fare more easier and practical for me to reconnect with my surroundings by re-committing to getting out in the neighborhood on my bicycle, sitting out more on the front porch, visiting the local park and school track, and even walking over to the office instead of driving. It would be good also to get out and camp again for the first time in years! These are all solutions to which the author would applaud. On the opposite end of the spectrum, in order to make more solid connection with my environment, I should perhaps read less (!) unplug myself from my mp3 player, the TV, and the computer, all in order to proactively reconnect with my surroundings

As someone who believes in the Judeo-Christian worldview as related in Genesis 1, I believe God has created me not just for a relationship with the created world around me (the author's point about reconnecting with spaces has some validity), but, just as importantly, also with Himself and with the PEOPLE around me. So I wonder if the proposed solutions to reconnect with spaces through the use of technology miss the greater problem and will only serve to isolate us further from one another as we exist in a "one person shell" created by headphones, the Ipod, and before that, the Walkman, cell phones, and automobiles (Daniel Goleman, Social Intelligence, p. 6-8). The continuing invasion of technology into our daily lives results in human autism: nominal communication in actual isolation.

Enough for criticizing the philosophy of the book. The first half, which discusses how various creatures, including humankind navigate is itself worth the read! Ants count their steps, pigeons and sea turtles detect magnetic fields, seafarers supposedly detect ocean swells with their testicles or by other unknown means, other peoples apparently connect themselves to locations using stories and songs. Scout bees use waggle dances, some bird species remember up to 80,000 different cache locations in a single fall season, etc. captivating. I would have liked if the book had emphasized this section more fully, as I felt it was the strength of the book. Finally, I found the following ideas to be food for further thought:

* We Have Inaccurate Maps in Our Heads: Force of gravity (we are upright creatures) and the line of horizon leads us to neatly categorize things in term s of verticals and horizontals. Most people flounder through a highly schematized version of physical space that has only a weak relationship with the real world. We prefer to be in positions that give us some visual cover (refuge) but from which we can look out over large vistas of space (prospect.

* Our House Plans and Urban Planning: It is the quality of space, rather than its quantity, that influences our behavior. An integral connection supposedly exists between the design of the English home and their enviably successful way of life: true courtesy lies in the very absence of conspicuous marks of it.

* Space Syntax Analysis: simple diagrams of rooms and hallways collapse info about the sizes of the rooms represented by dots, or hallway lengths represented by lines, but they make highly accurate predictions about how people explore spaces and how well they are able to locate themselves. The comments about food court, grocery store, and casino designs were enlightening but I would have liked it to have been fleshed out further.

* Aggregate Behavior of People: though knowing the functional organization of a space (where the stores, washrooms are, etc.) can enhance our ability to predict movements through that space, the organization of the space is a much stronger predictor of our movements that what kinds of functions are served by the space. For example, many businesses are successful precisely because of where they choose to locate. Skilled architects and designers can bring people together or keep them apart with the same precision that a skilled potter employs to make a jug designed to meet out single drops of precious oil, as they attempt to do in designing casinos, etc.

* When it comes to urban planning, the same feature that draws people into public spaces (the desire to be near and to observe others) ironically seems to actually repel them from mass rapid transit systems. Car provides a sense of continuity and security from the private spaces of home all the way to the spatial threshold of the workplace.

* We supposedly abuse the environment in the US because we view land as a private economic resource while in Europe land is owned more with the understanding that one will be a good steward of the land for the common good. Early suburbs in America were designed from the beginning to be free of mixed use. Public spaces were entirely absent. Today it is the same: winding roads encourage privacy and discourage pedestrians. They are designed to facilitate cars, not walking.

* Lack of quality public spaces make social contacts in suburban settings difficult. As one is less likely to make chance encounters with neighbors on the street (ditto inside halls in office buildings), one has to work harder and in less natural ways to build social networks.

* Average house sizes have ballooned from about 900 sq. feet in 190 to more than 2,400 sq. feet in early 21st century, while family size has decreased. But the move away from courtyard homes (traditional in Taiwan where I live) has moved us further away from our connection with space.

* Few public spaces are successful, possibly because they are all prospect without refuge.

* Whether in public spaces in the real world, or in cyberspace, Jane Jacob's dictum "life attracts life" holds true. One of the surest ways to boost a feeling of presence in a virtual world is to share that world with other people.