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Z_M_Davis comments on The Great Brain is Located Externally - Less Wrong
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I suspect the real answer is that there is no we. For myself, I have no problem offloading my navigation needs onto Google Maps, but others want to internalize those skills. Perhaps we'll see individuals having still yet more diverse skillsets, as different people make different trade-offs on what they want to internalize and what they want to keep?
Unlike Janet D. Stemwedel (author of the blog you cite), I find that using Google Maps increases my knowledge of local geography. When I map directions, I tend to pay attention to the route as displayed on the map, make note of cross streets near where I am going to have to turn, and sometimes play with alternate routes.
Sure, it's almost a cliché: it's not the tools, it's how you use them. Unlike you, I mostly just copy down the directions by rote (which leaves me in a world of trouble when I miss a turn). I would guess that there's a similar effect of technology on public understanding of mathematics: calculators and computers open up whole new worlds to people who like math (algorithms!---the Mandelbrot set!---&c.), but just serve as a crutch to others.
I'm with you on this one. Before online mapping, I would have to have someone tell me repeatedly what to look for when navigating unfamiliar roads, and would get lost a lot. Now I can look at the map, come up with alternate routes. With StreetView I can even see landmarks.
Assuming that these skills don't generalize to areas where we can't depend on Google, I suspect that people desire to internalize these skill merely because they can (possibly for the show off potential or in order to validate their intelligence). Sort of like wanting to be unnecessarily* good at mental arithmetic when a simple calculator can do the job much faster.
Yes, sort of like how people desire to breathe merely because they can. To say that a skill is useful only prompts the question: useful for what? Your goal system has to ground out somewhere; at some point you need some conception of a life worth living and a work worth doing, that don't need to be justified in terms of anything else, or else why should why should we care about being useful? Cf. Eliezer's "High Challenge" and Nick Bostrom's "The Future of Evolution."
The wetware is also highly convenient. Sans Palm Pilot, I don't have a calculator with me everywhere I go. It would be useful to me once or twice a day if I could do arithmetic in my head without messing up nine times out of ten.
There's a procedure you can learn for that, at least for the simple stuff.
I learned chisanbop in the third grade, presented a report on it to my math class, and promptly forgot about it.