The Problem With GPS

GPS is awesome for all sorts of reasons. Having it for driving directions is great. And as more devices have GPS included in them there will be an increasing number of cool ways to use it.

So what's wrong with it?

Well, since it is so awesome people will work hard to make it even better, but it reduces the motivation for finding other methods of determining location. Which isn't a big deal if you have GPS satellites orbiting the planet you are on. But what happens when we start moving to other planets? Are we going to have to put a series of satellites around every planet we inhabit? Sure there will be other issues to be dealt with, like terraforming the planet and getting people there in a reasonable amount of time. And yeah humans explored basically all of Earth without GPS. But still, wouldn't it be nice if once we set up on a planet we immediately had precision location information?

That's the problem with GPS (inspired by watching way too much Stargate SG-1).

Really once we hit a certain point of technological progress shouldn't we start back over as cavemen in order to increase the motivation for technological innovation?

Hm, that phrase about necessity is the mother of invention is actually really wrong. I think that if you look at recent history the amount of need has decreased sharply while the rate of invention has increased rather rapidly. Everyone moving back into caves would instantly create massive need and yet severely slow down innovation. Plato, I'm calling shenanigans!