Wednesday, March 26, 2008

Are You Insane!

Now, there's a way you can insure you will never get lost: "Beating Traffic By Joining the Network - New System Takes and Shares Data From Cars"; (Washington Post, March 24). You can read it here: Never Get Lost
To which I say Are You Insane?! With this nifty system, you can insure you will never be off the grid. It's a puzzlement to me, though. Before the days of cheap navigation receivers nobody seemed to have a problem finding their destinations on the roads of North America. It is a little different on the ocean - signage gets a little scarce fifty or 100 miles offshore. A lat/long reading is a nice thing to have. Onshore, I'd think a nav aid showing you a map readout, or talking to you telling you where to turn, would be somewhat more distracting than those mobile phone chats the legislators are trying to make illegal.
Be that as it may; here is a way to insure that everyone knows where you are at all times. As is often said (as a wry irony I tend to think) "If you've done nothing wrong, you have nothing to fear." Now I am sure you never exceed the speed limit; nor would you make an illegal turn. Certainly, you are not the kind of person who would ever find yourself with an arrest warrant out for neglecting to pay a parking ticket. Nor would you ever be likely to find yourself served because of an unpaid debt. And never never would you have a bulletin issued for "kidnapping" your child in a custody dispute. So, as I said, you have nothing to fear. Unless you should end up on a Terrorist Watch List; when somebody in the Department of Homeland Fearmongering recognizes your name as an alias for Osama bin Laden's lieutenant in charge of terrorism in Montana, for instance. Hey, if it could happen to Ted Kennedy, it could happen to you!
All this wouldn't be too bad, if you still had any other civil rights; like habeas corpus, or the right to be treated as a prisoner under the Geneva Convention. But those rights have been suspended now, so you can expect some pretty unpleasant times.
Now, Of Course! as it says in the story; your personal information will always be kept confidential. Dash Navigation would nevernever let anybody discover your identification. Unless asked to do so by the aforementioned Department of Homeland Fearmongering. Then you can be pretty certain they'll cave. If TPC(The Phone Company) gave up the info, why do you suppose the just-as-patriotic folk at Dash to be any different. Hopefully, they'll get the same immunity as TPC, but in any case, you'll be hosed.
And I still have not figured out how the American Driver, that paragon of self-reliance, got sold on the idea he needed a Navigation Aid to tell him how to get from home to work!

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