In class this week, we discussed contextuality and how it affects decision support systems. One of these decision support systems discussed that I know many of us use in our daily lives are geographic information systems. This decision support system utilizes geographic databases to create and present maps and other relevant information to the user. To obtain this information, we often use Global Position Systems or GPS devices.
Many people us GPS devices to navigate around, getting directions on how to get somewhere or to find the closest Target, but while listening to a Stuff You Should Know podcast a few weeks ago, I learned about a different more, entertaining way to use your GPS device that I thought I’d share with all of you; it’s called geocaching. Geocaching is like the 21st century’s version of treasure hunting, where you use your GPS device to locate the “geocache.” Participants of geocaching will hide a waterproof container with a logbook and usually something of low value inside. Once they have created this geocache, they will record the coordinates and then post them online for others to look up and then, with the aid of their GPS devices, find. There are many different variations of geocaching, like traditional geocaching where you simply take an item from the geocache and replace it with something of your own, or the multi-cache, where you locate multiple caches, each one giving you a coordinate for the next, or mystery caches where you have to solve puzzles to find them.
