Ephemeral Wayfinding – concept
The Sublime
If you’re looking for a place here on earth, or up in the heavens, Stonehenge cannot begin to compete with Google Maps.
Yet for all its technical superiority, few people have profound spiritual experiences using Google Maps, while Stonehenge has provided exactly that for the last five thousand years.
If you’re looking for The Tourist’s Guide to Dublin, you almost certainly don’t want a copy of James Joyce’s Ulysses. Yet it’s hard to imagine a tourist guide, no matter how excellent or eclectic, that could be as compelling an experience of Dublin as spending a day there with Leopold Bloom.
Perhaps any artist alive today, if they had the fame and fortune Andy Warhol had when he was shot in 1968, would hire a fleet of body guards, or buy a private island, or both. Yet Warhol did neither. He continued to live in New York City and to walk its streets every day.
What if you could wear a sleek & sexy wrist band that would let you wander the streets of Dublin with Leopold Bloom? Or New York City with Andy Warhol? Or Florence with Isabella Medici, Bletchley Park with Alan Turing, Los Alamos with Richard Feynman, Hollywood with Marilyn Monroe, or Silicon Valley with Steve Jobs?
But not only the legendary, also the deeply personal: imagine a 2nd-generation native-born American returning, for the first time, to walk the streets of St. Petersburg with his grandfather as a child. Or to Shanghai to share a piece of her grandmother’s childhood. What if on your trip to Amsterdam this summer, you could wander its streets and canals with your college roommate who visited there last summer?
This is Ephemeral Wayfinding!
The Flâneur
Can’t you just do this with a phone app? No!
A phone distracts your hand. Maps have far too much detail and information overload to distract our minds. The analytic, rectilinear thinking of excessive maps is a comforting distraction. Yet in the experiences that resonate most deeply across the course of our lives ambiguity is as important as specificity.
Compass H2O will still guide you safely back to your home, hotel, or campsite. But along the way the gentle nudge of Compass H2O, a few more steps to the right, is an invitation to loiter, to luxuriate, to play tag with friends both virtual and F2F. Compass H2O is The Flâneur’s compass of choice.
This is Ephemeral Wayfinding!
Photos:
• Taro Taylor / Summer Solstice at Stonehenge
• The Coolector.com / The Flâneur Society Guide to Getting Lost
Sharon Gong is discussing.
Sharon Gong 10:27 am on July 11, 2014 Permalink
Here is the new user case from Susan:
Problem: The Google map doesn’t work in small scope.
For example, the Google map can’t guide you the route in a mall when you want to find a specific store. It is troublesome to refer to signs and still maps in the mall. This case can also apply to hospital, Disneyland, botanical garden, a trade show etc.
Solution: You set your destination on the map of the building or zone on your smart phone. Our compass can guide you accurately where you want to go without holding your phone. (Even if you hold your phone, you phone still can’t tell you to go upstairs or downstairs.But compass can.)