Last night Ros and I were standing on a street corner downtown when some drunk bros came by looking for directions to their hotel. They were equipped with smartphones and knew the name of the hotel as well as the name of the street it was on. (Although none of them could pronounce Chartres.)
We figured out pretty quickly where they needed to go and tried several times to tell them. But they stubbornly kept trying to ignore our advice and figure it out with their phones.
Here's how they used their GPS and internet enabled phones to do this. One of them had, earlier, taken a dark and blurry photograph of the hotel which he was holding up at arm's length and comparing with the scenery around us in order to judge their location "by the angles of the light" or something. Meanwhile another one kept insisting, "But we're not on Chart! This isn't Chart!" and trying to lead them off in the wrong direction.
We eventually pointed them the right way but I can't help but think that maybe this is why nature provides the French Quarter with iPhone thieves. Someone has to get those resources to where they will be used more efficiently, right?