Enhance

Google Latitude is a new technology that allows users to share their geographical locations through their cell phones. As an extension of Google Maps for Mobile, Google Latitude can determine the precise location of a person, or their general area, based upon the privacy settings of the user. The user also has the option of hiding their location entirely or just from a specific person.
Knowing this, Goggle Latitude is able to enhance the users’ ability to connect with other people. It facilitates physical meetings, in contrast to the current popular technologies of the modern era. Rather having solely communication as its primary focus, it emphasizes the importance of face-to-face contact. Goggle Latitude concentrates on the location of a person and by making it known to others is able to bring people together. Rather than replacing human contact, it enhances it, and therefore positively improves the life of its users.

Retrieve

Google Latitude will retrieve the common goals of current technology and further them to the point of reality. The Internet, social networking cites, and programs like Skype all have the objective of facilitating contact between people which otherwise would have been a difficult task. But the recurring theme with all of these technologies is that they become all absorbing, threatening to damage the very contact for which they were made.
This is where Google Latitude differs, for it encourages actual human contact with an Internet barrier in between. Borrowing elements from the GPS and tracker systems while using the cell phone as a host from which to operate, Goggle Latitude is able to effectively combine the goals of social Internet networking with the technologies of the GPS and cell phones and, abiding by the laws of convenience, enable physical contact between users.

Obsolesce

Google Latitude, being a new innovation, has the potential to render many forms of media obsolete. Although it is a relatively unique technology, its functions can provide an alternative to other human contact facilitators. Aside from combining the workings of GPS software with the applications of a cell phone, the program could substitute for social networking cites such as Facebook and Twitter. The status updating feature detailing the user’s ever-changing location of both is not necessary if the user’s friends can determine their location independent from the user.
Similarly, the texting function of a cell phone will not be used as frequently if communication is not necessary for a meeting between two people to take place. Evidently, though Goggle Latitude will be used primarily as an aide to technologies already present in modern society, it has the potential to render certain social networking cites and the texting ability of a cell phone obsolete.

Reverse

Google Latitude provides numerous benefits to the user of its technology, able to apply technology-induced human contact to the real-world medium. However, it has the potential to reverse the very thing it was meant to achieve. People could use the technology to monitor the location of others without actually desiring to contact them. But apart from using Google Latitude for other means, the technology has the possibility of hindering contact between people. For example, if a person wanted to catch up with a friend, they would search their location on Google Latitude. Now if they found that that friend was a fair distance away, they may rethink their original plan due to the fact that their friend is farther away than they thought they were.
Had they not used Google Latitude, they would have sought out the friend, only finding out how far away they are after they have made contact with that friend. So although Google Latitude has the potential to facilitate physical contact between people, its misuse or overuse can reverse the very intentions for which it was made.