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Ethical issues that the development of GPS is what I will be looking into for my final paper. Like we discussed in class, privacy is definitely the greatest issue that rose out of the advancement of GPS. The U.S. Department of Defense first picked up GPS in the mid-1960s. The military still uses it to navigate an unfamiliar territory and target on objects accurately.
Just like the functions that the military take advantage of GPS, the public started to have access to GPS receiver around the mid-2000s. We started to rely on GPS to take us places, navigate us to an unfamiliar spot, and even to look for places that provide specific needs, such as an ethnic food, gas stations with cheaper price, and schools. The society is changing as automobile industries started to install GPS into people's cars. Instead of selling cars that comes with paper maps, automobile sales agents are now promoting the benefits of buying a car equipped with GPS.
In addition to cars equipped with GPS, more people are using GPS on their smartphones for directions as well. GPS is a revolutionary invention because people are starting to abandon the old-fashion paper maps and replacing them with easy-navigate GPS for directions.
We used to have to spend hours trying to figure out which route is fastest or shortest to a destination, but now we can figure out them under a minute by just typing the address into the GPS. It is less likely that we would stop and ask a man on the street for direction to places, because everybody is too busy on their phones to notice if one needs help finding places. We can easily find out where our friends are partying at on Friday nights as soon as one checks-in on Facebook or other social media platforms via GPS.
The question is, are humans relying on GPS for directions and connections too much? What is going to happen to our society if one day GPS is all shut down, does that mean all of a sudden we are ignorant and cannot go places? Although GPS is a great technology that comes in handy in some situations, ethical issue like privacy has yet to be discussed.
Works Cited:
"Global Positioning System." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 10
Nov. 2014. Web. 12 Nov. 2014.
The GPS is definitely one of the most revolutionary pieces of technology that we use every day. I look forward to seeing you discuss both positive and negative aspects of its ethics!
ReplyDeleteI think the main ethical issue with GPS today is privacy. There's no doubt about its advantages in the modern world, but major companies are beginning to use smartphones to track people and sell their data to third parties. It would make a great paper, and I'm interested to see how you weigh out the advantages of GPS and possible solutions to the ethical problems at hand.
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