Cross checks are good with any action whether manual or automated. In our area we have people following GPS down boat launches due to the number lakes and bays surrounding us. I rely heavily on GPS and on line maps, but I have a hard copy map in my driver door as backup.
Ben's point about information storage brings up a job I had 20 years ago working with medical records. We had to build translation machines to convert outdated media and data formats to current standards. The customer was able to buy these machines or contract out the resources for this conversion. This is something that had to be done with each new format that was not backwardly compatible and is still a profitable business today.