Probably about 25 years ago, I remember emerging from my home ready to go to work to discover some little charmer had smashed into my car and swiped my car stereo.

It wasn’t even a very good one. It only played tapes. I dread to think how little they would have got for it on the black market. I suspect the value of the hammer they used to take out the window would have got them more.

But that used to be a thing, didn’t it? We all became paranoid some oik was going to deny us access to a bit of in-car entertainment.

Car stereos ended up having to fit removable front panels so you could click it off to deter crooks peering in, in pursuit of an easy few quid, such was the crime’s popularity. I suspect I wasn’t the only one – once getting a replacement model – who ended up just sticking the front panel in the glove box rather than risking it getting lost in the house.

Some even allowed you to pull the whole unit out to keep it safe. Seems like a ludicrous faff today.

But as cars started realising fixing a decent radio into the dashboard nipped this crime in the bud, the era of satnav arrived.

You know when technology moves at a remarkable pace when things which seemed magical when they first appeared just a few years ago seem gloriously outdated now.

We all rushed out to buy clunky big satnavs attached to our dashboards or windscreens. And if you forgot to remove them, well your in-built stereo was safe, but your navigation device was enough to ensure a quick hammer through your window and your goods half-inched.

Now, of course, manufacturers have taken the same route as stereos, with modern vehicles coming with them built-in. Or, of course, as is more often the case now you use your phone. Petty crime has just shifted to lifting any unattended mobile instead. One assumes they’ll be built in too soon.

But the arrival of Satnav had a fundamental shift in our perception of where, quite literally, we stood in this fair isle of ours.

Prior to their arrival, I worked as a reporter for a press agency – spending the bulk of my day racing around the county chasing one story or another on behalf of the national press. In an era before the sat-nav, it meant my backseat was awash with maps. Countywide ones, local town ones...you name it, I had it. As a consequence I got to know the county pretty well – and also knew exactly where I was at all times.

But the satnav generation don’t need to worry about checking the county map to see where they’re heading first and then drilling down to the streets as they get closer. They just stick in a postcode and off they go. North, south, east or west, who knows (or, for that matter, cares any more)? We’re all guilty of just following the instructions rather than being aware of where in Kent we actually are.

A jaunt up North, for example, no longer requires carefully plotting a route – and spotting any nearby places of interest which might require a quick detour – you just trust the machine to tell you the twists and turns needed. You don’t need to know where, at any stage, in England you actually are. Satnavs even tell you how much longer of the M1 you have to endure and what time you should arrive at your destination.

And if you’ve brave enough to drive through central London, no trip was complete without consulting a trusty copy of the A-to-Z book.

Does it matter? Well, probably not. And, let’s face it, the satnav has prevented many a row between couples where the passenger was nominated navigator. It’s probably saved many a marriage. A particularly tense journey around a French town’s one-way system, with only an out-of-date map, remains spoken of only in hushed tones in my household.

Today, we all just want to get from A to B as quickly as possible. I remember a few years ago, a survey revealed that one in five kids quizzed in a survey couldn’t say where the UK was on a world map.

And how many people on the north Kent coast hear visitors ponder if they can see France in the distance? (Oh the disappointment when they realise they’re just spotting Sheppey or Southend).

There is a danger many emerge into adulthood today with only the weather map as their basic guide to where major towns and cities in our nation are actually located...assuming, of course, they know where in the county the town in which they live is. How will they know where the delights of Milton Keynes, Watford or Northampton actually are on a map without a disembodied voice telling them the road on which to travel?

We should always try and remember that, like life itself, it is so often the journey to a destination which is worth drinking in and being aware of, rather than just racing past.

Perhaps those Satnav crooks were just trying to save us from geographical ignorance.