GPS: Good People Stalking....why?

From gesturing with hands and body movements, to drawing in the sand/dirt or on paper, to pointing on a map, to calling a friend and looking on the Internet…to GPS; the King of all options for directions.  Global Positioning Systems have grown increasingly popular since its invention in the 1990s.  Today, GPS can be bought as a separate device, or one can find it included in the dashboard of their car or as an application on their mobile device.

GPS is just another example of society’s ever-growing reliability on technology; however, like with any type of technology, there are quite a few negatives to combat the numerous positives.  In a New York Times article entitled “Personal Use of GPS Trackers Growing Fast,” the author warns that new compact GPS trackers have recently been used not as cartographic devices, but rather as a way to track spouses or the elderly against their will.  With society beginning to rely more and more on GPS technology for direction, where is the line drawn between acceptable and unacceptable usages of the device?  Can parents track their teen’s vehicle as they choose?  Can family members track their elder relatives for safety purposes?  Will agreeing to these and other positive usages with potentially beneficial outcomes open the wrong can of worms that causes worrisome wives to track their husbands under the suspicion of an affair?  While society should definitely embrace this revolutionary technology, there must be civility when and how these devices are used.  Scott McNealy, then-CEO of Sun Microsystems felt as though the end isn’t near, it has already passed: “You have zero privacy anyway.  Get over it.”  Mr. McNealy is incorrect.  Google’s former CEO Eric Schmidt correctly stated that “If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.”  This is the direction of attitude society needs to take; private information is no longer private once posted onto the Internet.

Personally, I feel that there are far more benefits than risks with GPS.  For example, as a Civil Engineer I look forward to learning how to use GPS technology on the job (http://www.asce.org/Product.aspx?id=12884907802).  Specific tasks such as surveying, positioning, and a number of other engineering situations are enhanced with the accuracy of GPS.  If and when society completely adapts to GPS technology in the workplace and out in the world, in my eyes the only “electronic stalkers” should be law enforcement and emergency responders.  Any other such usages can and should be viewed as criminal intent, and of course, unCiVil-ized.