It was coming, sooner or later. With the increasingly smaller world made possible by the technology of cellphones and the Internet, it was a matter of time before all the streets, highways and points of interests in a major country will end up in one small neat battery powered package. GPS systems are becoming more and more a staple, part and parcel of American life at a rate that would stun even the most battled-scarred technology marketeer and evangelist. People are up and about using their handheld or in-car GPS systems for a variety of purposes, from getting safely and surely from point A to point B to scouting for specialty restaurants in their city.

Talk about innovating on a concept that has been bugging humankind since time immemorial! But purists might be asking, what about those days of simply driving around some vaguely familiar neighborhood grubbing around for some cozy place to dine?! Or, the sure fire one: parking and getting out of the car to rub shoulders with locals and asking for directions or suggestions? GPS systems are reinventing this tiny portion of American life, just as cell phones did some ten years ago. The reasons are as diverse as the GPS brands and models themselves, right up to the forms; some GPS systems refuse to just be trite and mediocre handhelds. The last few years uprooted GPS technology and planted it into computers, and to cell phones. Who can have the last say about what the next five years might bring us? Perhaps our billfolds will have embedded GPS chips so that if ever we're held up the police will be able track our lost money.

According the wired, connected, in-the-know and converted faithful, GPS systems are the most meaningful inventions to come around since the tape player. Most say they can't let go of their model in that particular brands because it alone has the ability to get you from one place to another without you mixing up hard-to-memorize directions, and without you trying to interpret the longitude and latitude of a map, or read the coffee-stained Mapquest directions that you printed out prior to the start of the trip. Yes, when it comes to crisscrossing the roads of unfamiliar towns with your car, there’s no doubt that GPS systems are the very precise thing you need to once and for all do what you need to do in that unfamiliar town.

The device generation that bears the alias of Y generation cannot swear too much how it is absolutely worth the price. Naturally, the parents of the aforementioned Y generation who are skeptic passengers in their children’s cars beg to differ. Whether it’s for the cost (automobile units costing $200-$400 and subscriptions for cell phone GPS costing more than $10 per month) or simply because GPS systems simply don't cut the strict definition of an essential necessity, many older people think that the so-called GPS wave as nothing more than a passing annoyance, even more than what the cellphone was a decade ago. Will it be the same for GPS systems? Only time will tell.