On Fox News Sunday, failed HP CEO Carly Fiorina used the end of the interview to underscore her misunderstanding of modern technology.
In telling of her reconnection to her faith, Ms. Fiorina draws an unfortunate analogy:
... One of the reasons I refound that personal connection is through thinking about science. You know, human beings have created a GPS system that can keep track of billions of moving objects and provide very precise instructions to all of them. And so, it occurred to me that if human beings can do that, certainly God understands what's going on in each of our lives and he answers those prayers that he should.
WALLACE: Ms. Fiorina, thank you. Thank you for sharing that with us. Thank you for joining us today. And we'll see you on the campaign trail.
Ms. Fiorina is clearly implying that a single, navigationally omniscient, Global Positioning System keeps track of, and provides guidance to billions of devices.
The global positioning system no more keeps track of all cars, cellphones, and other gizmos than rulers keep track of how big everything is (meter sticks for those of you living outside of the USA, Mianmar, and Liberia).
The Global Positioning System and GLONASS provide time and position information that allow devices to calculate their own position. Software applications can use that position information to provide driving instructions that the GPS/GLONASS knows nothing about. The ideal of omniscient guidance has a checkered past and will not ever really arrive.
I can manage to forgive this sort of ignorance from a second rate actor turned politician, who may think that balistic missles can be recalled after launch, but hearing it come from a high-tech industry leader is much harder to take.