Forget the map and just pass me that flat-screen

The days when tourists and walkers had to be experts in origami to find out where they were are fast disappearing. These days, an aptitude for new technology is far more useful than a talent for folding and unfolding maps. And developments in electronics mean that "getting lost" could be a thing of the past.

The Royal Geographical Society's annual conference in London heard yesterday how electronic devices combining mobile phones, satellite navigation and digital cameras allow travellers to identify their exact location - and even whether there might be a pub around the corner and what beer is on tap. The state-owned Ordnance Survey organisation no longer relies on producing paper maps to survive. Indeed, traditional cartography now makes up just 9 per cent of its revenue. Increasingly, its business is to produce sophisticated electronic data giving travellers a multi-dimensional picture of their surroundings.

Electronic devices are providing a traditional two-dimensional map together with "temporal" and "dynamic" information. The former means the user can see himself pin-pointed on the map and the latter will provide continuously up-dated data on what is going on in the area. A "virtual map" could allow a wayward traveller to hold a flat-screen up to see where they are; a digital camera would capture what the user is looking at; GPS technology would pinpoint where the handset is and the screen would show information including street names, transport links and entertainment venues.

Dr Chris Parker, head of research and development at Ordnance Survey, said developments in portable devices means mapping no longer simply consists of "geographic features on a landscape". He said the future would bring a revolution in the way geographic data is "collected, managed, delivered, traded and used".

It is "quite possible" even road signs could become superfluous, with motorists relying solely on in-car satellite navigation systems to find their way, Dr Parker added. Clearly, such a move would require more accuracy in the data used to avoid drivers being directed across rivers or over cliff edges by an errant dashboard device.

"Users could receive just the information they require at that point in time," Dr Parker told the conference. "In the future, the system would know more about me and I would allow it to have the information I want it to."

But the technology could also be used by utility companies and even market researchers to call up data about homeowners while they stand on doorsteps, raising questions about privacy and intrusion. "Technology is neutral," Dr Parker said. "What society does with it is the important thing We design our own futures; how much of my privacy do I give up to get a service?"

Alex Kent, a cartographer from Canterbury Christ Church University, said the Ordnance Survey still printed 5.1 million maps last year: "Users may feel more confident using maps which they feel to be more aesthetically pleasing.

"Maps don't just perfectly mimic the landscape. They are human and social projects and there remains a crucial art to mapping to make them user-friendly as well as easy to navigate that can be lost in all the new scientific techniques."

The historic story of the Ordnance Survey

England was caught between rebellion in Scotland and war with France when King George II commissioned a military survey of Scotland in 1746. The job went to a young engineer called William Roy whose name is engraved on the Ordnance Survey's Southampton headquarters. But Roy's vision of a full national survey was not implemented when he died in 1790. The year after, with the threat of the French Revolution looming, the government ordered its defence ministry - the Board of Ordnance - to survey England's southern coast. The first one-inch to the mile map of Kent was published in 1801 and in 20 years a third of England and Wales had been mapped. More suitable six-inch to the mile maps were commissioned in 1840. In 1935, the retriangulation of Great Britain was launched and the National Grid reference system introduced. In 1973, the first computerised large-scale maps appeared and the digital age began.