Do you remember when "I think we missed the turn" caused a complete emotional spectrum of reaction? When the car would go quiet because someone had to admit they'd lost the page boundary on Thomas Guide map 347 and the next bit was on page 389?

So do we. There used to be a thing called knowing where you were. It lived in a spiral-bound atlas in the back seat, or in the head of whoever was driving. The Thomas Guide assumed you'd figure it out. The TripTik gave you only the path. GPS skipped past both and asks only that you keep the wheel pointed forward.

As usual, Renee and Marc travel through the past to see how that shaped today and where we're heading down the road. Maps, Thomas Bros, Mapquest, GPS...and some military satellites in there along the way.

If you have ever sworn at a Thomas Guide while driving in Los Angeles traffic, watched your phone confidently route you into a field, or forgotten which way is north in the city you've lived in for ten years, this one's for you. And if you're still that one person who knows the diagonal shortcut through the residential streets that gets you to the airport in twenty minutes, please hold that knowledge. It's getting rarer.

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Join Renee and Marc as they discuss tech topics with a view on their nostalgic pasts in tech that help them understand today's challenges and tomorrow's potential.

email us at nostalgicnerdspodcast@gmail.com

Come visit us at https://www.nostalgicnerdspodcast.com/episodes or wherever you get your podcasts.

Tomorrow's episode is all about the transition from a world where maps were an everyday driving tool to the world we have now with satellites buzzing overhead telling us exactly where we are and how to get where we want to go.

And because this is a podcast about things we miss and what we learn, we learned that keeping maps current is a big job! Things change. Roads change. And...GPS changes us. As we depend on GPS, our spatial skills degrade.

So, that's the idea for this week's song. Places we once knew change and we lose our spatial sense.

Have a listen - Three Wrong Turns Home.

[Verse 1]
Rolled off the highway
Coffee gone cold
Feels like it's all been changed
Record shop's a coffee place
Diner has a different name
Miss my own street
Laughing round the turns
[Chorus]
Three wrong turns from home
Three wrong turns
On a road I ought to know
Drove it in my sleep
Lord, knew this town by heart
Three wrong turns from home
[Verse 2]
Past the old pool hall
Now it's a mini-mall
School's gone, fence and dirt
Light at Seventh hardly waits
Bridge wider than I knew
My maps are wrong I don't know when
All the names I knew are gone
[Chorus]
Three wrong turns from home
Three wrong turns
On a road I ought to know
Drove it in my sleep
Lord, knew this town by heart
Three wrong turns from home
[Bridge]
Maybe I was gone too long
Maybe town moved on
Radio's still playing
Windows down, sun going down
[Final Chorus]
Three wrong turns from home
Three wrong turns
On a road I ought to know
Drove it in my sleep
Lord, knew this town by heart
Three wrong turns from home

We'd love to hear from you. Click here to give us ideas on new episodes.

Join Renee and Marc as they discuss tech topics with a view on their nostalgic pasts in tech that help them understand today's challenges and tomorrow's potential.

email us at nostalgicnerdspodcast@gmail.com

Come visit us at https://www.nostalgicnerdspodcast.com/episodes or wherever you get your podcasts.

Do you remember pulling a spring-loaded plunger without being told what it did? Watching a goomba walk toward you and dying without being told why? Typing "go north" into a cursor because there was nothing else to type?

So do we. The best games taught you how to play them just by existing. No tutorials. No pop-ups. No onboarding flow. Pinball did it with physics. Zork did it with a parser. Mario did it with a question mark block. The machine showed you what it was. You figured out the rest.

This episode is about fifty years of that. Coin-op arcades to twelve million monthly subscribers. Quarters in a diner to modern open worlds that sell the absence of hand-holding as a feature. The hardware changed. The business model changed. The core loop stayed the same. Here is a world. Here are the rules. Figure it out.

If you ever mailed Activision a photograph of your Pitfall score, still picture a small white house west of an open field, or held a Galaga high score at a pizza parlour long enough that you'd drop in just to check no one had knocked you off, this one's for you. And if you got eaten by a Grue, we forgive you.

We'd love to hear from you. Click here to give us ideas on new episodes.

Join Renee and Marc as they discuss tech topics with a view on their nostalgic pasts in tech that help them understand today's challenges and tomorrow's potential.

email us at nostalgicnerdspodcast@gmail.com

Come visit us at https://www.nostalgicnerdspodcast.com/episodes or wherever you get your podcasts.