The first time I experienced the use of GPS services was while being driven by a friend to a four hundred and fifty year old place in the university town outside Amsterdam. It was a cold, wet and dark evening and the warm voice from the device, though in Dutch, was reassuring. The voice took us out of the dimly lit maze of narrow cobble stone alleys into the wide and bright motorways.I was quite fascinated by GPS device in the car.
A couple of years later when I changed my car, the salesman tried his best to sell me the latest AV system which had built-in GPS. I was not keen on two counts. First - the city was in a wonderful state of evolution. Major roadworks were on, even the driveways in apartment blocks were not excluded from this frenzy of construction activities. The GPS device to be useful would have had to be a real-time system. Overnight diversions and road-blocks were order of the day (night too!). I am sure if I used a GPS, I would be making turns into non-existent roads. Second - the car that I was buying had enough of new features that I had to learn and I was not keen to add this to the learning curve. So whenever, which was quite often, I had to drive kilometers to take an exit or to make a U-turn in order to undo the wrong turn or direction I took, I would think of the missing GPS device in my car.
This year I got a GPS device as a birthday gift from my daughter. I am yet to fathom the reason why she chose this gift. Was this to ensure that I reach her to her destination in time in future or she finds me directionless! But now I have a companion in the car. Someone who keeps giving me directions which I choose to ignore most of the time. It has become a habit in the mornings to switch on the device and make it navigate to my office. It does give the feeling that I am being 'driven' to the office, but I score small victories by ignoring the instructions and making detours.
The internal GPS that we have are what we all are born with. The upgrades to this GPS software happens all through our life. Many a times we choose to ignore the feedback from our GPS. But when we lose direction in life the poor device gets the blame.
