In response to a post in this forum, I finally broke down and installed Google Earth. I've used it at work, but we have so many tools there to work with spatial data that it was just another piece of useful software, nothing out of the ordinary.
But I finally got around to installing it on my home machine, and I located my house (probably looking at the same air photography we commissioned ourselves for municipal mapping purposes) and noted the latitude and longitude.

A few minutes later I went outside and used my pocket GPS to determine my position; the same numbers, of course, I had read off my computer screen. My position accurate to a few feet. I picked off the Universal Time from the device and compared it with my cheap wrist watch, which I haven't set in about six months: I was off by only a few seconds. I knew exactly where and when I was, with hardly any effort or understanding on my part.

It may seem very straightforward and ordinary to many of you, but to me, this is an almost incomprehensible miracle. It is the power of the gods. I can recall spending hours scanning the horizon with binoculars, waiting, hoping, praying for the first glimpse of a distant lighthouse, knowing the bearing and the time of sighting would give me a rough idea of where I was and which course to set for home. I remember the nagging fear the light might not be where I expected, the flood of relief when I finally saw it pop up over the edge of the earth, the lines and arcs on the chart where I now knew myself to be, give or take a few miles. For all I know that light is no longer there, decommissioned as obsolete, a dark structure bravely defended by architectural historians for its scenic and recreational value, but of no real use to mariners.

I may know exactly where I am now, but I feel totally lost on this carefully measured and surveyed planet. Even my friends, with whom I share these thoughts at the speed of light across unimaginable distances, have no faces, no voices, not even a recognizeable penmanship. I always wondered what the future was going to be like. I guess I finally made it.