While I'm sure there are lots of people who use geo-aware devices to improve their lives, being both a geographer by education and a UX designer by profession means I'm also sure lots of them would prefer to use a geo-aware device which takes their cultural preferences into account.
While a culture doesn't "have" to abandon its old ways, when a militarily superior presence arrives and says "we own all of this now because this GPS-made map says so" and you have no way of representing your territorial boundaries except in terms of "that sacred land on the third loop of this animal's migratory trail" and "twelve generations of reconstructing this holy temple in the same spot which moves because it's on the shore of a river that changes course and width and breadth constantly," and your kids who were previously happy hunting in the forest by day and smoking around a campfire by night now want guns and jeans and Nintendos because they're novel, it's hard to reconcile the two. Now you have to figure out French without anyone wanting to teach it to you, because then they don't get to pave over your Italian land if you figure out how to explain that it's yours in French, and also stop your kids from becoming indentured French servants just to spite you. It's a technology that's been forced upon you; you haven't been given the choice to "invest" in it on your own terms.
These are real things that happen. This is not a contrived example. This is what geographers at my alma mater dealt with, teaching non-first-world peoples how to use GPS against encroaching developers and governments, and how to translate between their native cultural "distortions" and the emotionlessness, meaninglessness, absolutism of GPS and GIS.
While a culture doesn't "have" to abandon its old ways, when a militarily superior presence arrives and says "we own all of this now because this GPS-made map says so" and you have no way of representing your territorial boundaries except in terms of "that sacred land on the third loop of this animal's migratory trail" and "twelve generations of reconstructing this holy temple in the same spot which moves because it's on the shore of a river that changes course and width and breadth constantly," and your kids who were previously happy hunting in the forest by day and smoking around a campfire by night now want guns and jeans and Nintendos because they're novel, it's hard to reconcile the two. Now you have to figure out French without anyone wanting to teach it to you, because then they don't get to pave over your Italian land if you figure out how to explain that it's yours in French, and also stop your kids from becoming indentured French servants just to spite you. It's a technology that's been forced upon you; you haven't been given the choice to "invest" in it on your own terms.
These are real things that happen. This is not a contrived example. This is what geographers at my alma mater dealt with, teaching non-first-world peoples how to use GPS against encroaching developers and governments, and how to translate between their native cultural "distortions" and the emotionlessness, meaninglessness, absolutism of GPS and GIS.