I was driving home one recent night on a winding set of streets and expressways near LaSalle when my GPS went black.

I suddenly realized I’d been blindly following Google Maps with no clue where I was. Now I was cruising down a street called Shevchenko Blvd. in the middle of who knew where.

I spent the next few minutes driving aimlessly about, searching for familiar street names, hopelessly lost in my own city.

Then, fortunately, my GPS clicked back on and took command.

Like many people, I’m losing whatever sense of direction I once had. But it’s only one of many human skills that are atrophying, as technology does more and more for us and we do less and less.

We have apps to remember our appointments, split our restaurant bills and remind us which TV series we’re watching and what episode.

We have others that locate where we parked our car or forgot our keys, and more that will ghostwrite our wedding and condolence notes.

As machines take over more human tasks, we humans are becoming useless. For instance:

The GPS is a mixed blessing for the directionally disabled like me.

When travelling, I no longer stop regularly to ask directions from pedestrians who answer: “Go three streets........

© Montreal Gazette