GPS Navigation

Born in 1997, I hardly remember a world pre-internet.

GPS NavigationBorn in 1997, I hardly remember a world pre-internet.


Born in 1997, I hardly remember a world pre-internet.

The other day, I was having a conversation with someone, a bit older than me, about what it was like to manually navigate a city. It may sound stupid, but I have no idea what I would do without a GPS on my phone.

Would I pull out a real map?

Would I write down directions that I pulled up from my computer?

I remember, my family used to print out mapquest directions before my soccer games. We would bring them with us in the car and use them to get to our destination.

Then my dad got a GPS (garmin or something) in his car and that changed everything.

Then we got phones with built in GPS systems and that changed everything once again.

I have two outstanding questions…

1. What was common before writing down directions from the computer? This is a real question. Were communities so small that we did not need to go very far? Did we know the entire city by heart?

2. What will be next that “will change everything?” Will it be glasses that direct us everywhere? AR?


Originally published at gonen.blog.

By jordangonen on January 17, 2018.

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Exported from Medium on February 17, 2018.