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| Yes | 47% | 205 votes | Total: 440 votes | |
| No | 53% | 235 votes |
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Add to FavoritesWhen the military introduced first introduced global positioning systems it was due to a few key reasons. Soldiers
needed to be located on the battlefield quickly, they needed to find where they where going, and the technology
was used for generating movement statistics like speed, traffic patterns, e.t.c. More importantly, the GPS was
introduced in travel to meet the technological demands of the fast moving information age.
As GPS made its way into the civilian population car manufacturers adopted it for the same basic reasons. Because it is highly convenient the presence of the technology in automobiles spread at a pretty good rate. GPS systems give the user the basic function of maps while adding extra electronic information needed for the operator to make decisions they are otherwise not available if the person was using a traditional paper map. Future demands of the electronic age will see a gradual merger from the use of standard maps with static information to electronic based GPS systems that can gather and pass on dynamic information to the operator quickly.
One of the reasons why GPS technology will replace standard maps in travel is the same reason why other types of
technology have replaced their more basic progenitors-as the information age progresses, the use of newly introduced
electronic devices become standard in their given industry as further advances are made to the same line of technology.
Technology push, the ingenuity and creativity of hundreds of companies that make up the inventions we see in the electronic industry, will keep introducing faster and smarter GPS systems that will become attractive to the needs of the travel and auto industries. These include safety requirements, easier traffic management, and communication. While this economic element drives the spread of GPS technologies another force, the "consumer pull", a continued demand of travelers that need such a technology will help drive the change-over from the more basic static maps we use to the more dynamic GPS system.
The needs and expectations of your basic traveler has changed since the invention of the static paper map. It will also continue to to change, possibly at an even faster rate to match continued advances seen in todays vehicles and roadways. Imagine yourself as a road traveler back in 1945. Most likely you only needed to know how far the closest city was. In the coming future when traffic conditions change at a more rapid rate, and cars become smarter, the needs and expectation of the traveler will be much more than just checking distance and route. As evident in a lot of todays emerging vehicular technologies, your vehicle, as a smart car or truck, will most likely need to know how fast other vehicles around you are going, you will need to know how far the closest fuel station is as your car compares that information to the fuel left in its tank. These increased travel needs are better met using the GPS.
Today, the transition from the use of the static paper map to the GPS is in full swing. We see an increase in the number of people using use travel technologies like Mapquest, and Yahoo Maps to plan their travel if presented with a new destination. These technologies are based on GPS satellite information. As the number of people using these GPS-related technologies increase, the use of static paper maps by travelers will decrease, and we will eventually see a complete transition to travelers using the more fitting GPS.
Although static paper maps where first, travelers are speeding into a more connected world, and global positioning systems are simply a better fit for the travel environment that road users in coming generations will be accustomed to.
Learn more about this author, Kenneth O'Mally.
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No
As former Chief Technology Officer of NAVTEQ Corp, and the former SVP for Global Marketing and Strategy at that company, it might seem counterintuitive for me to be arguing in the "NO" camp. But before laying out the argument, I'd like to say that Mr. Marcus' line of reasoning is substantially without merit and would like to address that first. The debate as framed is clearly intended to encompass the devices rather than the infrastructure and when he takes pains to point out how the (satellite) infrastructure is not "the map" he misses the essence of the debate. Further, he goes on to say (in paraphrase) a map is a map.
In fact, digital maps for GPS are radically different from printed maps. In the latter, the map is conerned primarily with relative accuracy. "This street is laying in this direction and joins those streets at its ends". A user of such a map is unconcerned with absolute positional accuracy and such maps can be permitted to be hundreds of meters adrift from "ground truth" without substantial loss of function. A digital GPS map does need to be absolutely accurate and (as an obvious by-product of this) also relatively accurate. Otherwise the GPS receiver(concerned only with coordinates) will place the device in a location which doesn't line up with the map's view of that location.
So, having clarified this point, why do I argue that GPS won't replace conventional maps?
Debates often hinge not differences of substance between protagonists and antagonists but on their different readings of the terms in the title. If we can get past such interpretive differences we can argue the core substance of the debate at least as I (and I hope most people) interpret the title.
In this case, having posited that GPS here means the devices which leverage the infrastructure more than they mean the infrastructure per se, we need to further clarify what we mean by "conventional maps". In my opinion this term is not restricted to the choice of medium. Instead it refers to a manner of usage in which the human does the interpretation of spatial information which may or may not involve them placing themselves in its context. In this way, for me at least, the term "conventional map" means a map depicted on a medium for direct human interpretation. By this approach, we can describe an "unconventional map" as being one which is either not depicted on a medium or not intended for (or amenable to) direct human interpretation. It is interesting to note that many GPS devices (especially the earlier ones in automobiles) did not bother to display a map as such. They simply gave turn instructions (arrows and words) in anticipation of upcoming maneuvers. Though a digital map was being used inside the GPS device, the user was never presented with its contents. Only the consequences of using its contents.
I believe maps (conventional or otherwise) serve a very large variety of purposes and only some (perhaps even a large majority) but not ALL purposes will demand an the unconventional map required for GPS.
So, conventional maps may become digital and the medium might be an LCD but they'll be conventional and serve those other purposes. They might even be aboslutely accurate and fit for GPS usage, but as long as they're being used "conventionally" they'll be conventional.
If we take this perhaps purist view, even when paper maps are to be found only in museums, GPS devices will not completely replace conventional maps since those devices won't be fit for whatever non GPS purpose the conventional map is being used for by a human viewer.
Learn more about this author, Salahuddin Khan.
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