The United States government gave access to the Global Positioning System (GPS) to the world, but we have reached a point where we are abusing it?
There is no question that GPS has made many parts of our lives safer and easier, but you have to wonder when do we finally say, “Okay, enough with using it for absolutely everything in our lives!” It has made navigation at sea a breeze, planes use it and it has made long road trips a lot simpler than having to constantly look at a map, but at the same time it seems to be taking away common sense also.
Do we really need to use it to avoid getting tickets from speed cameras? Do we really need to track friends family via the GPS in their phones at all times? And are we so far gone that we can no longer know which house to demolish based on a simple street address? Never mind the numerous stories of people that have taken wrong turns off bridges and the such when they decided to listen to their GPS unit over common sense.
None of this is to say that you shouldn’t enjoy the benefits of a system such as GPS, the crew at StarterTech are fans of the car navigation and cell phone tracking aspects of it, but shouldn’t we also realize it isn’t the ultimate solution to everything under the sun? While the house demolishing seems a bit suspicious, the people who follow in-car navigation to the point of driving off roads in to rivers… well… they’re just morons. Sorry, but it’s true. ”The GPS told me to go here… I don’t care that it’s water…”, okay, you deserve to have your car sink (although we do hope you get out in time).
Just because a technology has reached an affordable price point doesn’t mean we should slap it into every conceivable device and use that we can. And what do we do if somehow the system goes down? We will then have a life filled with useless gadgets and no idea how to do certain things any more. (does anyone remember how to read a map?)
Technology is a wonderful thing, and it can solve many problems, but that doesn’t mean we have the right to not only use it as a crutch, but as a complete replacement for common sense.
