this post was submitted on 28 Oct 2024
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No that makes sense. It's crazy how much GPS has changed day to day life, and in such rapid speed and to such an extent we just don't even think about it.
One of my favourite things these days is to just jump in the car with my wife and just go for a drive in the countryside. I'll avoid main roads wherever possible, and just pootle along country lanes looking for wildlife and interesting things. And the best part is that I literally can't get lost, because at the point when I want to go home, I just hit the 'Home' icon on the screen in the car and it automatically calculates the quickest route for me.
Sure, my grandparents could have done similar, but they'd have had to bust out the maps and figure out where they were and how to get home. All I do is press a button.
It really is very cool.
"I agree" but in detail
Just follow the GPS, it's easy like that.
Of course it's apple maps.
But seriously if you ever need to have something to ponder, sit down and think about how different your life would be without GPS.
Right, for example i never visited Zagreb.
That's just the start of it
This statement confuses me somewhat, is it a bit? The "crazy" difference in my life without GPS would be: I'd have spent some more hours of my life looking at maps to work out where I am. That's what we did when I was a child and it really didn't take long.
That's honestly it.
It's not a bit. GPS has fundamentally changed several aspects of our lives.
Instantly knowing where you are on a map has fundamentally changed several aspects of our lives? I really disagree.
I could well be the weirdo but it's fundamentally changed no aspects of my life. I would love to know how it has others.
You are never lost in any place on the globe. You can always make your way home. Just the safety radiating from that. The way people suddenly feel/are more able to leave their local area is in itself a massive change in our lives. Finding way to any other place has now become nothing but a question of entering an address in a phone.
That is unironically a superpower. The fact that saying "I always have up to date information about most of the world, I always know where I am, I am able to find my way to any place, anywhere, at any time. I always know of changes to routes and roadblocks. I am never lost" would be considered a trivial statement, is testament to just how integrated GPS is in our lives.
Your maps are always up to date with all information you could ever need.
This has severely facilitated individual navigation, removing one of the main advantages of public transport (in the perspective of the individual user. I wrote part of my bachelors thesis about this) making it so more people are perceiving the car as the most effective medium of transport.
I cannot overstate how much of a simplification "I look less at maps" is. Actually think of the many times you are in a new place. Think of the times your friends have suddenly changed the address for your meet-up. Think of the value the knowledge "I always know where I am" has.
This is what I mean when I say it has happened so fast and in such an all-encompassing way that we don't even perceive it.
"I look less at maps." You don't have accurate maps of every place you visit. Those maps are not up to date. Those maps will not contain the amount of information a GPS contains. If they do, then you have allocated a significant amount of resources towards the goal of always having up to date maps (and more than one type for each place) of every place, everywhere you might ever go.
Navigating by way of map in unfamiliar environments isn't just a quick look and you're done. The very basic way you drive has changed. When was the last time you slowed down at every street looking at roadsigns? When was the last time you pulled over to re read the map? When did you last have to rely on local knowledge? Reducing this to "I look less at maps" is a massive trivialisation of an impressive reduction in the labour and resources required for individual wayfinding.
If you want a fun visualization of this: Beverly Hills Cop had the protagonist get some fancy sci-fi tech. That sci-fi tech was GPS.
Even if it actually would be true that all it would mean to you really just is "less map" think of the world you exist in. Do you know how airplanes navigated before GPS or proto-GPS? Ships? I've done old school navigation and it is tiresome. You have to constantly recalibrate your compass. Mark your way. How do you know how fast you're moving when you can't reliably know where you are? The water moves your ship just as your engine does, but how do you know how much and in what direction accurately?
Lord help you if you're in shallow waters with sandbanks.
90% of all cargo is transported on ships. The modern system of JIT-delivery would not be feasible without GPS.
Same goes for trucks. Any transport of goods has been made significantly easier reducing in large part the time it takes, the level of uncertainty and the amount of labor involved.
These things impact you.
Warfare has been changed by GPS as well. The fact that all soldiers can accurately know where they are, where their destination is and what route would be best. At all times. And this information can easily and effectively be communicated up thru the chain of command.
This is a drastic change of the world we live in.
An entire experience of being in a place you do not know, no longer exists. You are (practically) never lost. I really cannot describe how big a deal it is that people are not lost as long as they have connection and power.
Edit: Read the article linked by @[email protected] it details lots of stuff I didn't cover. It's got some fearmongering, but the GPS stuff is good.
And the guided munitions
Yeah actually how did missiles work before GPS?
Mostly dead reckoning i.e. knowing where you started, your acceleration, and the equations of motion. It's actually still how most missiles work, AIUI few have the ability to receive time signals from a satellite while in motion.
I thought you were talking about ships and was about to introduce you to the chronometer.
Kinda rad, if it weren't for the thing it's used for
This is actually becoming a significant problem in some contexts. I train people in some wilderness first aid skills and also train the Burning Man community mediators / first responder volunteers. We're starting to get folks who volunteer for us, but are staggeringly bad at knowing how to navigate the world when GPS is unavailable or unreliable. Burning Man's Black Rock City is laid out like a clock face, with radial streets named for times on the clock and other streets running perpendicular to those named after letters (so an address would be something like "5:45 and G street"). In the last few years, we've been increasingly seeing people who want to volunteer to help folks, but struggle to navigate this very, very basic city grid even with the benefit of a map. It's not so much that they can't use a paper map--that is a problem, but very few people have ever been any good at orienteering without training--but rather that they're fundamentally just not used to the idea that you have to pay attention to where you are. GPS exists out there, but without specialized gear, it's not precise enough to really locate you on the city grid, and since the city shifts location in the Black Rock Desert every year, it's difficult to hard-code something like that with a specialized app or piece of tech. Map use is a trainable skill that we're used to incorporating into the curriculum, but the idea that you have to actually look at street signs and dedicate a portion of your brain to remembering your location, trajectory, and relative position has turned out to be extremely difficult to impart to people who have never had to do it. We've had to turn away otherwise very good volunteers because "paying attention to your position in space" turns out to be a skill that's very hard to train for in a limited time frame.
Yeah. Forbes. Lol fearmongering expected
It's funny when it's a genuinely interesting article and it's just shoehorned in like that
Yeah. I got to that part and laughed pretty hard. I will say I have no clue on the security of GPS though. 😆
Yeah I believe it, but its kinda funny that they end with some grandstanding about having to protect the average American from... Iran spoofing the GPS of a cargo ship that, let's be honest, probably was in Iranian waters?
Iranian pirates? It’s the whole projection that a countries criminals are their government that the west like to use. Who knows tbh.
Yeah its hard to say, but whenever I hear about Iran being 'agressive' I always end up thinking about that image cataloguing a bunch of American military bases surrounding it.
Or mossad/us/cia making such an invasive virus to hack Irans nuclear program it spewed across the world like wild fire.
Damn I spent all this time typing this out for you and turns out you're just being a fecetious debatebro. Sad to have wasted my time.
I'm really not, but aight, just assume bad faith I guess.
Either you're being obstinate or we're just talking across purposes. I'mma out 'cause this conversation now sucks :(
You literally are. I take pains to describe how even if you truly would have no personal difference in how you move thru the world, the itself has been changed in so many ways that do impact you, and all you can respond with are repetitions of arguments I've already illustrated as being based on flawed premises and then trying to do some wack attempt at engaging in semantics.
You can drape yourself in as sad a coat as you want for being rightfully called out, you're still being a shitty debatebro
Lmfao yes. Instantly knowing exactly where we are on a map has DRAMATICALLY and FUNDAMENTALLY changed our entire species. There are so many systems interwoven through GPS. I’m assuming you’re just being facetious but if not. https://www.forbes.com/sites/dianafurchtgott-roth/2023/09/26/gps-technology-that-truly-changed-the-world/
Yeah cool! This is a bunch of ways that GPS has meaningfully improved the way some things work. I totally agree with that.