THE LOSS OF EVER BEING LOST AGAIN

Bismark may have been an autocratic old militarist, but he understood governments. He summed it up this way: "Never believe anything in politics until it's been officially denied!"

To date, the government in Washington has neither confirmed nor denied GPS satellites are being used to track its citizens. But they're up there -- spinning and beeping and watching every second of every minute of every day -- and so one has to wonder.

The receiver in my car talks to me in a clipped Oxford accent which is in itself intimidating even before she informs me I've just missed my turn for the third straight time. The one they now want to provide parents for their children's backpacks apparently will squeal on the little tykes the minute they stray from Mom's pre- progammed agenda for them.

But here's my problem. GPS has now made it virtually impossible for any of us to ever get lost again....!

Yes, yes, I understand the amazing geographic advantages to all this, and yet I can't help mourn the loss of ever being lost again. Just think of the sorry consequences.

Now there's no chance of making a wrong turn on a city street and driving into the refreshing mistake of a neighborhood you never knew existed (like when I found myself in the surprising pastoral charm of Ravenswood)....or getting lost west of O'Hare and discovering a necklace of tight little communities I never heard of....or heading for Lake Geneva and miscalculating my way into some small-town main streets straight out of a Norman Rockwell calendar.

You see, today we've corsetted ourselves into this splendid lacework of satellites and security cameras wherever we turn. At intersections, at airports, in schools, in the cellphone pocket of every B-movie character in every gin joint in all the world. If Marco Polo and Christopher Columbus had tools like these, what wonder would there be left to lure them on to new worlds? Or if I hadn't incorrectly driven into Park Ridge one day, would I be here in this house right now asking you these questions? Or if Joan and I had not gotten lost on the way to that cast party so many years ago, would we have ever ended up watching the sun come up upon our happy realization we were destined for one another?

So please -- might all you brilliant technocrats just for once stop pushing the envelope!!