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Pinpoint
Book

Pinpoint

How GPS Is Changing Technology, Culture, and Our Minds

Greg Milner
W.W. Norton, 2016

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Editorial Rating

9

Qualities

  • Innovative

Recommendation

Like the Internet, the Global Positioning System evolved from a military project into an indispensable aspect of everyday life. When you enter a destination into the GPS receiver in your car or smartphone, you access satellite signals that the US armed forces designed to coordinate troop movements, guide fighter jets and help missiles find their targets. As journalist Greg Milner reveals in this comprehensive history, GPS is everywhere: Cities regulate traffic flow using GPS data to synchronize stoplights, and automated tractors follow GPS signals as they traverse farm fields. Milner presents the narrative of GPS technology, from the first attempts to track Russia’s Sputnik satellite with Doppler waves to GPS’s current role maintaining the world’s “critical infrastructure.” Milner is a brisk storyteller who knows how to condense historical events and simplify science without dumbing it down. He paints vivid portraits of the people who developed and marketed GPS. getAbstract recommends his insightful, entertaining overview to students, professors, history and science buffs, as well as to start-up entrepreneurs considering the next blockbuster that depends on GPS technology.

Take-Aways

  • The US launched the first Global Positioning Satellite in 1978.
  • America’s military designed GPS to aid navigation and precision bombing.
  • GPS’s satellites in Earth’s orbit broadcast radio signals that show their location and the time of broadcast.

About the Author

Greg Milner’s writing appears in Wired, Salon and Rolling Stone. His Perfecting Sound Forever was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award.

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