THE RIGHT DIRECTION WHY THE GPS REVOLUTION IS TWO STEPS FORWARD AND ONE STEP BACK.
034 R&T VOL. 14
D E P T. O F O V E R T H I N K I N G
RECENTLY, I WAS DRIVING down a road, following the directions from my Ford Escape’s GPS, when the navigation voice said, “In a quarter-mile, make a sharp right turn into oncoming traffic.” What?! “This is it,” I thought. “It’s finally happening. My car’s been hacked!” Then I noticed the bleep-eating grin on my son’s face. He was messing with me from the passenger’s seat, playing jokes through the speakers using his phone. That voice wasn’t the nav at all. Nevermind how he figured this out—it launched us into an important conversation. I asked, “Do you realize how incredible it is to have GPS in your car telling you how to get where you’re going?” “Wait,” he said. “Cars didn’t always have GPS?” Audible eye-rolling. “No, let me tell you how it used to be, back in the day.” It used to be that every time anyone tried to go anywhere they’d never been, they’d have to scribble directions on a dirty napkin. Then they’d try to read that napkin while driving, with an actual paper map open across the steering wheel. When
BY A . J . B A I M E
