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Can you remember how was your life before Internet, downloads, and e-mails ? When postal mail took days to get delivered to your partners ? I can't even imagine that nowadays. The same is true for navigation, be it in car, plane, boat, or biking or hiking.

I never really wanted to buy a GPS-equipped car, but it's just like mobile phones with camera no way to find one without. The navigation system I use now uses GPS for positioning, but it also has full street database, graphical display, itinerary computation, and TMC to get me informed about traffic jams.

In the beginning, I used it as a toy, and found it useful to have an estimated time of arrival. By that time I knew the surroundings quite well, including places where traffic problems usually occur, so I did not really profited from the system it was just here-

A couple of times a year, however, I went to remote, and unknown places. The map display, and synthetic voice giving me instructions like "turn left in 300 meters, and take A4" made such expeditions more comfortable.

The previous step in the navigation evolution was to print maps from the Internet, and take those with me, working my way out with road signs. Now, I just note down the address, and put it in the GPS.

My view of GPS usage changed when I moved to a new place, in another country. Everything here is unknown to me, my navigation skills are more than challenged, particularly when I have to drive in the large nearby city.

The last time I did so without GPS, I was lucky enough to have a passenger doing the map reading while I was driving. This way, we could bring a rental car back in Montreal (city full of one-way roads) on the first attempt. Could I have done that alone, doing driving and map reading at the same time ? Probably not that well.

The GPS-based navigation system replaces driver assistant, with some advantages. It's usually even more reliable, and when the driver misses a road in a complex intersection, the navigation system doesn't laugh, doesn't get irritated or upset, but simply computes a new route. Again, and again, if needed.

So on base of my personal experience, no big theory there, it's very probable that GPS navigation systems will replace conventional maps. The prices got significantly lower over the last years, and as many consumer electronics start producing low-cost receivers, this trend will certainly continue.

Will we have GPS telephones or wrist-watches ? Probably. Is that good or evil ? Not easy to answer my best guest is that it's so. As other technological changes (e-mail, mobile phone, ), GPS is coming, and is just as good as what we made with it.

Learn more about this author, Rod Beglerf.
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