Pinpoint: How GPS is Changing Technology, Culture, and Our Minds

by Greg Milner

Overview

“One of the most mesmerizing and exhilarating, yet alarming modern technology books . . . an extraordinary tale.”—Gillian Tett, Financial TimesOver the last fifty years, humanity has developed an extraordinary shared utility: the Global Positioning System. Even as it guides us across town, GPS helps land planes, route mobile calls, anticipate earthquakes, predict weather, locate oil deposits, measure neutrinos, grow our food, and regulate global finance. It is as ubiquitous and essential as another Cold War technology, the Internet. In Pinpoint, Greg Milner takes us on a fascinating tour of a hidden system that touches almost every aspect of our modern life.While GPS has brought us breathtakingly accurate information about our planetary environment and physical space, it has also created new forms of human behavior. We have let it saturate the world’s systems so completely and so quickly that we are just beginning to confront the possible consequences. A single GPS timing flaw, whether accidental or malicious, could bring down the electrical grid, hijack drones, or halt the world financial system. The use, and potential misuse, of GPS data by government and corporations raise disturbing questions about ethics and privacy. GPS may be altering the nature of human cognition—possibly even rearranging the gray matter in our heads.Pinpoint tells the sweeping story of GPS from its conceptual origins as a bomb guidance system to its presence in almost everything we do. Milner examines the different ways humans have understood physical space, delves into the neuroscience of cognitive maps, and questions GPS’s double-edged effect on our culture. A fascinating and original story of the scientific urge toward precision, Pinpoint offers startling insight into how humans understand their place in the world.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393354362
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	05/16/2017
Pages:	352
Sales rank:	644,669
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.10(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Greg Milner is the author of Perfecting Sound Forever, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. His writing has appeared in Wired, New York, Slate, Village Voice, Salon, Spin, and Rolling Stone. He lives with his family in Brooklyn, New York.

Table of Contents

Introduction: The Whisper from Space xiii

Part I Calculating Route

1 Tupaia Goes Home 3

2 The When and the Where 24

3 Global Reach, Global Power 46

4 Ranging the Perfect Beet 73

Part II You Have Arrived

5 Death by GPS 111

6 The Hornet's Nest 138

7 Better Living Through Tracking 170

8 Return from Mid-Ice 202

9 Tied Together (40.74375° N 73.9835° W) 235

Epilogue: Direction Home 263

Afterword to the Paperback Edition 267

Notes 273

Acknowledgments 295

Index 301

Editorial Reviews

Dramatically illustrating just what the GPS might be taking from the human race, Milner recounts the feats of early Polynesian seafarers who traversed wide Pacific expanses guided by nothing but their dauntless minds. . . . [A] fascinating probe into an increasingly ubiquitous technology.

Bryce Christensen - Booklist (starred review)

[A] welcome guide to where [GPS] came from, what it does and where it might be taking us.

Damian Whitworth - The Times

In this startling and persuasive book, American journalist Greg Milner shows how [GPS] saturates our existence... [Milner] suggests that GPS is as potent and pervasive a force as the Internet – if much less well understood.

James McConachie - Sunday Times

Through a multitude of examples—from Polynesian navigation to precision agriculture to the U.S. military—the world according to GPS emerges, and with it a new way to understand our own sense of place and time... Milner's detailed examples will leave you questioning the ways in which GPS has infiltrated our lives.

Renee M. Blackburn - Science

[A] compelling exploration of how GPS became so ubiquitous—and what we lose when it's all we know of navigation.

Matthew Daddona - Outside

[A] suitably precise and fascinating account of the modern evolution of [GPS]... Milner expertly deconstructs the implications of this monumental shift in human life.

Tim Adams - Observer

A deeply researched book with fascinating interludes... [Milner] explains the technological principles lucidly.

Stephen Poole - New Statesman

[A]ssured technological history.

Nature

If you read only one practice-building book this year, this is the one! Lynn Grodzki, psychotherapist and extraordinary practice-building coach, outlines her successful 4-step process for crisis-proofing your practice. With the laser focus of a seasoned business professional, the empathy of a compassionate therapist, and the light touch of a great coach, Grodzki shows you exactly what to do to keep your practice thriving in any economy. Follow the easy step-by-step roadmap in this book to get your phone ringing!

Gillian Tett - Financial Times

[A] joy to read… It will be a strong contender for my science book of 2016.

Clive Cookson - Financial Times

An informative yarn.

James Anthony - Evening Standard

No technology has transformed the human landscape so completely, yet been taken for granted so quickly, as GPS. The reason that brains are so good at storing maps is because the brain is a map, and our collective internal map is now migrating somewhere else. Greg Milner’s Pinpoint is a fascinating chronicle of how this happened and why—captured before the details had a chance to escape.

George Dyson

Milner is a brisk and funny guide.

Konstantin Kakaes - Wall Street Journal

Seldom have I learned so much so effortlessly. . . . Every page was a treasure-house of fascinations: my temptation after finishing was to begin the book all over again, there being so much to absorb, all of it crucially important to understanding our world's dependence on one of modern civilization's new-made fundamentals.

Simon Winchester

Whenever people theorize about the collision of technology and culture, the Internet tends to consume all the oxygen in the room. But there is another global system that's taking over our lives in an even more insidious fashion, with stranger implications for the future of humanity. Pinpoint dissects the modern age of mapping and shows the hidden dangers of a world where nothing is hidden at all.”

Chuck Klosterman

In Pinpoint, Greg Milner gives us a much-needed account of GPS, its history, philosophy, and the overwhelming consequences of its success. Funny, scary, and tremendously readable, Pinpoint will be an eye-opening thrill for anyone who has watched their blue dot dance around an online map.”

Andrew Blum

GPS guides our world. Here at last is the amazing and well-told story of where it came from, how it works, and where it—and we—are going.

Richard Rhodes