Audiobook9 hours
Pinpoint: How GPS Is Changing Technology, Culture, and Our Minds
Written by Greg Milner
Narrated by Eric Michael Summerer
Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
3.5/5
()
About this audiobook
Over the last fifty years, humanity has developed an extraordinary shared utility: the Global Positioning System. Omnipresent, free, and available to all, GPS powers everything from your phone to the Internet to the Mars Rover. Greg Milner tells the sweeping story of GPS, from its conceptual origins as a bomb guidance system to its present ubiquity. While GPS has revolutionized methods of timekeeping, navigation, and seismological prediction, it has also altered human behavior, introducing phenomena such as "Death by GPS," in which drivers blindly follow their devices into deserts, lakes, and impassable mountains. Milner also shows the desperate vulnerabilities in the system we now use to predict the weather, track prisoners, and land airplanes. Delving into the neuroscience of cognitive maps and spatial recognition, Milner's inventive and timely book is at once a grand history of the scientific urge toward precision and perfection and a revelatory philosophy of how humans understand themselves in the world.
Author
Greg Milner
Greg Milner is a senior contributing writer and columnist for Spin magazine. His work also appears in Slate, Salon, the Village Voice, Wired, and other publications. He is the author of Perfecting Sound Forever.
Related to Pinpoint
Related audiobooks
Moon Shot: The Inside Story of America's Apollo Moon Landings Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Carrying the Fire: An Astronaut's Journeys Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Victorian Internet: The Remarkable Story of the Telegraph and the Nineteenth Century's On-line Pioneers Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Failure Is Not an Option: Mission Control from Mercury to Apollo 13 and Beyond Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Army of None: Autonomous Weapons and the Future of War Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Eyes in the Sky: The Secret Rise of Gorgon Stare and How It Will Watch Us All Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Mars Direct: Space Exploration, the Red Planet, and the Human Future Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Weather Machine: A Journey Inside the Forecast Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5How We'll Live on Mars Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Case for Mars: The Plan to Settle the Red Planet and Why We Must Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Tubes: A Journey to the Center of the Internet Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Death of Expertise: The Campaign Against Established Knowledge and Why it Matters Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Last Man On the Moon Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Neither Snow Nor Rain: A History of the United States Postal Service Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Rise of the Machines: A Cybernetic History Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Riding Rockets: The Outrageous Tales of a Space Shuttle Astronaut Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Network: The Battle for the Airwaves and the Birth of the Communications Age Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Test Gods: Virgin Galactic and the Making of a Modern Astronaut Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Ghost Work: How to Stop Silicon Valley from Building a New Global Underclass Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Quiet Zone: Unraveling the Mystery of a Town Suspended in Silence Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Ultimate Engineer: The Remarkable Life of NASA's Visionary Leader George M. Low Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Truth, Lies, and O-Rings: Inside the Space Shuttle Challenger Disaster Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Technology & Engineering For You
Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Smart Phone Dumb Phone: Free Yourself from Digital Addiction Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Consider the Fork: A History of How We Cook and Eat Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Future of Geography: How the Competition in Space Will Change Our World Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Einstein's Fridge: How the Difference Between Hot and Cold Explains the Universe Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Knowledge: How to Rebuild Our World from Scratch Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5How to Build a Car: The Autobiography of the World’s Greatest Formula 1 Designer Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Technology Trap: Capital, Labor, and Power in the Age of Automation Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Mini Farming: Self-Sufficiency on 1/4 Acre Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Path Between the Seas Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Stuff Matters: Exploring the Marvelous Materials That Shape Our Man-made World Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Design of Everyday Things Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Battle for Your Brain: Defending the Right to Think Freely in the Age of Neurotechnology Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Elon Musk Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Four Battlegrounds: Power in the Age of Artificial Intelligence Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Path Between the Seas: The Creation of the Panama Canal, 1870-1914 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Fallout: The Hiroshima Cover-up and the Reporter Who Revealed It to the World Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Island of the Lost: Shipwrecked at the Edge of the World Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The One-Straw Revolution: An Introduction to Natural Farming Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Fly Girls: How Five Daring Women Defied All Odds and Made Aviation History Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Innovator's Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Death in Mud Lick: A Coal Country Fight Against the Drug Companies that Delivered the Opioid Epidemic Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Death of Expertise: The Campaign Against Established Knowledge and Why it Matters Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Grunt: The Curious Science of Humans at War Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Knowing What We Know: The Transmission of Knowledge: From Ancient Wisdom to Modern Magic Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Related categories
Reviews for Pinpoint
Rating: 3.4444444037037036 out of 5 stars
3.5/5
27 ratings2 reviews
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5A history of the development of the global GPS system. Interesting enough if a bit too heavily focused on technological developments rather than usage. A good example though of how today books featuring technology can date very quickly. Published in 2016 and already in need of an addendum.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Pinpoint: How GPS Is Changing Technology, Culture, and Our Minds is a historical account of the development of the Global Positioning System, various related and interdependent systems, the political and technological climate that gave rise to GPS as we know it today, and an account of how it may be affecting the way we see ourselves and perceive the world outside of ourselves. Milner chronicles many unpublished interviews with leaders in the field, ranging from corporate to military to academic experts. Milner spends a lot of time explaining the political ins and outs of who developed what that led to GPS, at times getting lost in names of military branches and competing organizations. It seems that some things are explained with painstaking detail, while others are not explained that much, probably reflecting on how much detail Milner was able to acquire from his sources. Organizationally, the book is divided in chapters that make thematic sense, but within the chapters some threads get lost. Personally, I was more interested in the neurology research on the brain and wayfinding intersection as well as the ancient methods of wayfinding and navigation. The former is promised in the title of the book, though it does not take up much of the book. This is perhaps not much is known about the way the brain configures and reconfigures itself based on spacial navigation. The latter, which Milner spends some time discussing in terms of history, is a bit vague despite the number of pages spent on the subject, perhaps reflecting the way the scientific world is still, for the most part, puzzled by non-technological ways of finding your way, say, in a vast, featureless ocean. A recent article in the New York Times Magazine (The Secrets of Wave Pilots by Kim Tingley) does a better job in shedding light into this tradition than Milner manages in the book (though Milner does tell a much more detailed historical story, which is interesting).One thing that I would have liked to read about is the etymology of "dead" reckoning and how it relates to ded. (deduced) reckoning, which Milner never once touches upon. It's an interesting story, whether it be dead or ded., it seems, from the very little I was able to glean over the internet.The role of GPS in finding and tracking objects, finding our way, sensing the movements of the tectonic plates, fighting wars, traveling into space, measuring distances, fighting crime, and most importantly, measuring time are discussed in the book. I did wonder if GPS has any applications in the healthcare industry.Overall, I think the book aggregates a lot of interesting and important in formation about GPS and surrounding technologies. It could use a bit more humor and fewer paragraphs packed with institution names and titles and names of people. The book would also be immensely improved with maps that show some of the discussed locations and journeys, and diagrams that explain some of the main concepts in simplified terms (I am not sure if the final version of the book had any figures or not.)Thanks to GoodReads and the publisher for a free copy of the ARC for my honest review. The ARC has some repeated paragraphs and typos, which I believe will be edited out and corrected for the final proof. Some transitions seem oddly placed, perhaps because some later parts were written before earlier parts, which could use some tightening and rearranging.