Godly Positioning System… (Deus Ex GPS)

I blame Robert Llewellyn for this blog.

He asked a question on Google+ as to what someone who hadn’t even considered God would be called. After all, there are terms for non-believers, terms for those that aren’t sure and there are terms for those who believe…. but what if you simply haven’t thought about it at all?

Don’t worry… this isn’t about to get all religious and heavy!

I reckon in that case you are just ‘content with your place’… You know what you want, you know why things happen (like it or not), and you know what you can and can’t control. Once you have that, you just get on with life.

Maybe a term for someone who has never even contemplated a God should now be penned as Llewellynist…©

For some reason this triggered something in my head (admittedly it doesn’t take much…)…

I figure that a God is like GPS in car navigation…. (bear with me….)…

True Believer

There are those that follow GPS and fully believe that it is correct.

They use it for even local routes that they travel daily! They’d be totally lost without the crutch that it offers their navigation…

Sure, it might take you a longer route, or lead you to roads that you can’t get down, but that’s all part of the packet isn’t it? It’s trying to lead you the correct way, even if it seems to be wrong or hard to follow…. you just have to follow it and believe you’ll get there…

Now there are some that follow Tom Tom, some follow Garmin, some follow NavMan…. some follow iPhone or Google Map plotting… and each will swear that their GPS is the best….. Sound familiar?

Some believe it so passionately that they stick the GPS in direct line of sight on the dashboard and what happens outside the car almost becomes second place in the scheme of importance.

There are those that will even give their lives up by just trying to go that one step closer to GPS Heaven and JUST watch the screen. These people are the ones you see in upside-down cars in ditches, with ambulances and police cars and grieving people from the other car that these ‘true believers’ crashed in to…. Bastards. Faith purely in GPS is faith misplaced.

Agnostic

These people use the GPS from time to time.

Generally they’ll turn to it when stuck or lost, but upon finding their way, they turn away for it again.

Every day use just doesn’t require a GPS, so they don’t really care about it that much – and even when they use it, they have a healthy dose of scepticism about the route it tries to take them. They don’t blindly believe what the GPS has to say.

They are happy enough with the reality of a map, but also accepting that a GPS can be handy. The GPS will most likely be off to one side where it can be looked at with a cursory glance, but not enough to detract from keeping the attention on the road ahead.

I would put myself as a GPS agnostic…. (not a religious agnostic though – that’s a different kettle of fish altogether).

After all, GPS is a useful tool, but as with all tools, you have to know where and when to use it.

Atheist

Well, sod the GPS, those things never work…. These people would rather get the map out and follow that. The paper map is reality – it is there in their hand and tangible.

These people do not trust GPS and no matter what argument you put to them, they will counter it. They are almost as bad as the true believers.

After all, GPS is a useful tool, but as with all tools, you have to know where and when to use it.

Llewellynist

They go out for a drive and just go to where they have to get to.

They don’t think twice about a map or GPS. Sure, they may look up a more complicated route on a map or internet, they might ask directions but once they set off they don’t really give it a second thought.They don’t dwell on the message, the GPS, the map book, the route…. they just get on with it and don’t give the journey a second thought.

It just happens.

They drive, they get there. The journey is just ‘there’ and the destination is arrived at.

Druids…

Yeah…. As long as they can hitch a ride to Glasto or ‘Henge, then they really don’t care….

Cleese, Hawkins and Time Travel

Happy 65th birthday to one of the greatest scientific minds of our time. To say that Prof. Hawkins is a genius is an understatement, but I think he is missing an additional vocation as an impressionist – but more on that later.

I want to watch some off my DVD movies on my iPhone, but due to licencing laws I should buy an iPhone iTunes download of a movie to do that – even if I already own the movie! Now I’m all for the movie and music industry earning from what they give us – but I think it stinks when they try to charge you multiple times for a product.

Case in point: Ringtones. Sorry, but if I bought your song, then I should be able to use it as I wish for my personal use. I don’t mean I want to copy it and sell it, or distribute it in any other way, I just want to use MY purchase MY way for MY use.

I think a person should have the rights to use their purchases as they wish – as long as they are used for personal use, and not shared. I don’t want to buy an artists ringtone if I already own the song, after all, it’s my music, my phone, and me that’ll use and hear it! What’s next? If I play the song in my car I will have to pay rights to the artists if my passengers are listening!

DVD movies are in the same area of thought for me. I already own the discs, so why can’t I freely use then on my iPhone? It’s not like I’m watching both at the same time, and on the iPhone only one person can really watch something – yet I have to pay more…. but play the DVD on the TV and I can watch it with friends… so where are the lines drawn?

Now if I want a John Cleese quote as a message alert, and I already own a CD or DVD that contains the material, then I’d baulk at paying for a few seconds worth for a clip – but I am more than willing to pay for a stand alone message that he may make just for phones etc.

I have John Cleese as a voice on my GPS, and I payed for that use. I had no problem paying for his voice talent being used in this new role – He has to make a living after all. Same goes with a few other novelty voices I bought a few years ago when I bought the GPS originally.

That brings me to time travel. It was something John said on his Twitter blog that triggered a thought in my head. I don’t think time travel is, was or will ever be possible. Imagine 30 years ago how people thought about computers and mobile phones! Only very few people had these things, but now they are in reach to all of us – regardless of age, wealth, religion, sanity etc. There are people who break the law with them, people who use them for deviant purposes (no matter what their age)… and that is why I don’t believe in time travel.

Imagine if time travel became viable – like the first computers. It would start out as a top secret thing (probably military or government). Years later it would become a private sector thing for business and industry. Soon it would be open to the public. Eventually it would be there for all to use. I am fully aware that this process could take decades, or hundreds of years, but we are talking about time travel… Initial development could be sped up by going back in time to solve problems that had taken years to solve first time around.

So, if time travel existed in government or military circles, I am sure the development would be rapid. The designers could get so far, and then go back in time with solutions to speed up develoment… I hope you can follow that!

As time goes on, time travel would leak out, or simply become publically available. The moment it is publically available you can place a safe bet that people would travel back. Kids etc just wouldn’t think twice about misusing it – and as such we would know about time travel by now (or in the past!) because we would have been visited by now!

Does this screw things up for Stephen Hawkins then? This crazy blogger disregarding science due to future kids with high jinx and time travel on their hands? What’s Hawkins to do?

No disrespect, but if I spoke through a box, then I’d do what I did with my GPS… Hawkins could give lectures in the style of John Cleese (less the silly walk), or in gangster tones of a mafiosa hitman. If science did fail Hawkins then, he could always install a few celebrity voices and become an impressionist… as long as he paid for the voice rights.