Geocaching: What If?

[+JL_HSTRE]

How would geocaching be different if...

 

...it had not originated in the US? Would we be hiding caches 100 m apart?

 

...Jeremy Irish had not founded Groundspeak?

 

...early geocachers had worked with National Parks from the beginning and thus NPS was not mostly off-limits to caching?

 

...Garmin had started a geocaching website a decade earlier than they actually did?

 

...if smartphones had already existed when geocaching started?

 

...if selective availability had been turned off 5 years earlier than it was?

 

...if QR codes were in wider use when geocaching started?

 

Feel free to add your own speculative What Ifs as well as answering the above.

[+AustinMN]

How would geocaching be different if...

 

...it had not originated in the US? Would we be hiding caches 100 m apart?

 

Maybe.

 

...Jeremy Irish had not founded Groundspeak?

 

Somebody else would have. It's an obvious game.

 

...early geocachers had worked with National Parks from the beginning and thus NPS was not mostly off-limits to caching?

 

Not very likely. Bureaucrats tend to be suspicious of anybody else's ideas. When the government gets big enough, the bureaucrats tend to hate other people's ideas.

[+Pork King]

How would geocaching be different if...

 

...if QR codes were in wider use when geocaching started?

 

Feel free to add your own speculative What Ifs as well as answering the above.

 

We would have had a lot more caches using a QR code than we do now, with possibly its own category of cache that would eventually have a moratorium placed on them, and now there's only a few left, and people would be screaming to "Bring back QR caches!"

 

So what if SA had never been turned off? "Once I get to within 100 yards of GZ, I just put away my GPS and start looking!"

[+on4bam]

How would geocaching be different if...

 

...it had not originated in the US? Would we be hiding caches 100 m apart?

 

Could be but I like to think we'd had better (i.e. less restrictive "guidelines") if if everything started and was run in a less lawsuit-happy area.