Always Lost

I have a long standing relationship with maps and navigation. My father was a professor of geography and I presented my first paper on cartography to an Association of American Geographers regional meeting when I was a high school sophomore. As a math major in college I tinkered with geodetics on the side.

It was only natural that I would develop an interest in GPS devices. In the remote sensing and Geographic Information Systems my father and I worked with, GPS input was an important feature. After college I was offered a job with a leading navigation company and eventually went to work for the company that launched the original GPS constellation.

My current  job takes me on the road 25 weeks out of the year and in my travels whenever I rent a car I end up getting Hertz's in-car GPS system. Hertz calls the system Never Lost.

In the interest of truth in advertising, they should probably call it Always Lost.

The trouble with GPS is that it is a compelling technology. The Hertz system has brightly colored moving maps and it talks to you. It says things like, "Left turn in 2.2 miles."

It has a feminine voice. The first time my wife heard it as I called her from my cell phone (yes, the dis-oriented author uses a handsfree unit) she asked me who I was with. I now refer to it as my girlfriend.

The problem with the NeverLost is that you become dependent on it. I had an assignment on Long Island. I stayed in a hotel about a mile away from the client's office. I could see the roof of my hotel from the client's conference room. I used the GPS to find a route to and from the client's office each day. Even though I traveled less than a mile each way and did it for 5 days — I could not have found the client without the GPS. Since it takes the GPS anywhere from a few seconds to a few minutes to acquire the satellites, I would simply start driving. So depending on where I was when the GPS kicked in I might get a different route.

I was actually always lost! Had the GPS failed — I would have been in trouble.

The best feature of the NeverLost is that using the Yellow Pages feature — I can always find the nearest sushi restaurant.