Cell Phone GPS

As technology advance, the use of cell phones will become much greater. They might encompass all your personal information, effectively becoming your ID, driver's license, social security card etc. It could also be your debit and credit card. You would no longer have to carry around these cards, simply sign up for the program, and download your information to your cell phone.

Cell Phones are already becoming cameras, hard drives, music players and video players. One could simply add video messaging with GPS installed. You could track your kids, know where your spouse is, or see if your friends are nearby, or at home. Of course all these settings will be adjustable for privacy. However, it will hopefully put a damper of cheating spouses and wayward children. Obviously it could help with missing persons, as authorities might have privacy overrides (insert political fears here).

Also GPS phones could give you directions from where you are at to your destination on foot or by car. This might also help you if you are lost. They could also download websites about your location or stats about it. Dating services might allow you to see if a potential date is nearby, or you could program your phone to tell you if any of your friends are within a mile of you. Police could track criminals down, who would be reluctant to abandon their phones, as it has their ID and cash on it. In fact, vigilantes might have their means suspended, and people on probation could be much more easily monitored. Traffic stats would be easy to compute, and advertising could be directed towards your demographic in stores and on the road. Music and art preferences could follow you around in any smart house, and light could automatically turn on and off when you enter or leave a room.

As GPS gets cheaper and smaller, I see us putting them on our cars to prevent theft, on our pets (and other animals for research), perhaps even on children and our keys so we won't lose them (or will our keys also be a part of our cell phone?) Obviously, privacy will be a central issue, and settings will have to be adjustable. But as long as the people's and state's rights are clearly defined, I think it will make our society much more efficient.