T
he turn-by-turn instructions of GPS-based navigation systems, ingeniously designed though they may be, can’t always save us from ourselves.
Consider the experience of a man from San Diego who flew to the East Coast and picked up a GPS-equipped rental car at the airport. After 20 minutes, he sensed he was headed in the wrong direction. Then he realized that he had unthinkingly entered his California address as his destination.
“The navigation system had dutifully set a route back to his home in San Diego, 3,000 miles away,” said Barry Brown co-director of the Mobile Life Center based in Stockholm, which does research on mobile communication. The incident happened to a friend of his.
Picture Courtesy of Flickr.com, username alex.lines
