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Australian police recently warned against navigating around, being guided by Apple Maps. Given the circumstances I can't say I blame them, nor that the warning was misplaced. For some applications and use cases, it's just not good enough. Funnily enough, this warning prompted Samsung to launch a small advertising campaign where they claimed their superiority by virtue of not using Apple Maps, but the ones offered by Google instead. Unfortunately for Samsung, the same police authority also warned against being guided by Google Maps as well.

What can we learn from all this? Well, first of all it's never a good idea to blindly trust any navigational system, regardless of where you happen to be, and specially when you might be put in a life threatening situation as a result of it. Secondly, it might be good to turn down the snark in your advertising, since it might backfire on you faster than you can press "delete" in your CMS.

Then we have all the thousands of people who have managed to get themselves hurt, or worse, in traffic since smartphones became really big in 2007. It was bad enough when people only had features phones to stare into while trying to navigate our everyday lives, but when huge touch screens combined with nearly infinite access to the Internet became hand-sized, it all really went south.

Walking into oncoming traffic while tweeting? Yup. Head-butting buildings and lamp posts due to answering emails instead of seeing where you are going? Got that! Driving all over the road while fiddling with FourSquare at the same time as you are trying to log into Yelp? I'm sure it's happened somewhere.

Not that I wish to imply that these are all new features of society. Heavens only know that people have managed to make a mess of things ever since we started building pocketable devices of any kind, be they electronic game devices or the transistor radio. Living in the now and not putting one self and others in jeopardy would appear to be a lost art, for the most part. Sure, blame the technology to some extent, but isn't the blob of mostly water holding said device ultimately the responsible one in the whole affair?

The technological wonders we have constructed over time enable us to have more with us at all times, and gives us the possibility to act on that information with devastating speed. While this is indeed desirable, for the most part, accuracy hasn't been on top of the list of priorities. In some cases it's merely an annoyance, and in others it can pose a serious threat to your health. Sitting in a small metal box on rubber wheels that achieves locomotion via ready access to an explosive liquid might not sound too bad in some circumstances. Add a desert surrounding it and it becomes quite a nasty situation, very fast.

Basically what I'm saying is, if you blindly follow any digital device, instead of your common sense, you are an idiot. And will most likely pay for it.

Robert Falck

Robert is a freelance tech writer from Sweden. You can follow his posts here on the British Tech Network, listen to him yap away on the British Tech iOS Show and read even more of his stuff on his site streakmachine.com or you can even follow him on twitter @streakmachine. (But you won't find him on Facebook!)

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Robert Falck

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