Summer Reading

GPS marks yet another rite of passage with the publication of Pinpoint: a full-length journalistic investigation of its development, personalities and societal impact, with a diverting assortment of side stories and philosophical illuminations. A technology can be said to have arrived when it receives this manner of broad-market, though rigorous, intelligent, probing treatment. Never mind that every such technology truly arrived long before their books were written.

This is not a book to give to friends and relations who ask you “How the heck does GPS work?” It does spend a bit of time on that subject, a very little bit. Neither is it a history of GPS. Author Greg Milner spends a bit more time on that topic, and his direct sources are impeccable. The major portion of the book is devoted to “contemporary history,” if there is such a thing: the sprawling tentacle-like growth of GPS into many industries and aspects of modern life.

Milner does not chronicle every one or even a plurality of these diverse fields. One gets the feeling he pretty much followed his journalistic nose into whatever interested him. Sections explore early receiver development, electrical power, financial markets, tracking (both personal and fleet), agriculture with a focus on the sugar beet, auto navigation,   and a few more. Throughout, Milner pushes forward anecdotes — personal recollection of many, many diverse contributors and benefitees, or in a few cases, victims. One chapter bears the title “Death by GPS.”

He takes long, looping sidetrips that are always interesting, far though they may wander. The most notable case is that of Polynesian cross-Pacific navigation, a mental construct called etak, which takes up, at length, the first chapter of the book. We become aware that possibly what interests Milner most is navigation as a state of mind. He attempts to tie it all together at the end; it doesn’t quite work, but the many questions he raises along the way are certainly worth pondering.

Two examples, only pages apart. In an investigation of the legality and Constitutional issues of tracking and surveillance by law enforcement, he states: “GPS provides the possibility of omniscience, unlike any previous technology. There is nothing ‘natural’ about using GPS to keep a continuous inventory of the world’s moving parts. It reflects a choice, a conscious application of a neutral technology . . . GPS itself is a blank slate onto which we project our desires.”

And in a section on marketing: “Stickiness, a term online marketers apply to websites that encourage repeat visits, could also describe how GPS lets us ‘build situational contexts around things and people to create new meanings, associations and stickiness of disparate data. The simplest example is when we use a program like Google Maps to learn about our location, a sticky query that draws in satellite mapping, ground-level photography, and business information.”