memes

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.