Pinpoint

How GPS Is Changing Technology, Culture, and Our Minds

By: Greg Milner

Narrated by: Eric Michael Summerer

Over the last 50 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.

©2016 Greg Milner (P)2016 Tantor

Critic reviews

"Funny, scary, and tremendously readable." (Andrew Blum, author of Tubes)

How did we live before gps

very engaging. I was completely unaware of how important gps is to our everyday life, beyond just Google maps

great book on the unseen infrastructure of navigat

some reviewers found the non-linear chronology of this book frustrating. However, if you look at it from a perspective of the development of navigational concepts and technology, it flows very well. It is a well written and narrated book, but may be a bit technically heavy for the non-techies. I loved it though. Definitely a great addition to my library of modern infrastructure books.

Really found this interesting

My early IT career included support for a land surveyor who purchased one of the first generation surveying systems made by Trimble. The very little information i remember from working with him left me with terms relating to gps and a fascination with its use. This book really filled in the gaps in my understanding of the system and a renewed appreciation and amazement of what it is...

Great information!

I had no idea of the history and many uses of GPS. It did put a little fear in me about its security!

A ridiculous wonderful story of a seemingly boring topic: GPS

The story starts off in a place that is far flung from the expected trajectory. Pinpoint is riddled with riddles. How we figured out what “here” is and what “there” is; a seemingly trivial thing in today’s age of smartphones enable with GPS.

But what it really points to is humankind’s ingenuity. The scale and affect of GPS is outside the scope of grasping for most, yet this book, littered with empathetic story driven content, shows as clear of a path and navigating to your local watering hole.

I started listen because GPS is critical in my work. I run a company called WearWorks that develops haptic navigation devices, Wayband, for the blind and visually impaired. We had issues with reliability especially for navigating blind users who may not be aware that GPS inaccuracies are leading them to the place down the street, but not the place they want to be.

It was a wonderful education of a tech we all have almost taken for granted. Highly recommended if you want to dig into the science behind what it mean to be “here”.

Interesting Historical and Technical Background

Would you recommend this book to a friend? Why or why not?

Not unless the friend had a lot of extra time to waste.

Were the concepts of this book easy to follow, or were they too technical?

I am a PhD physicist and found it easy to follow. I cannot judge for others.

Do you think Pinpoint needs a follow-up book? Why or why not?

NO, NO, a 1000 times NO!

Any additional comments?

This is a fun book to waste a few hours with. But, it is MUCH, MUCH too long for the value of the content. I thought it would be insightful and technical, and it was really just entertainment about the history of navigation and GPS, the fight of the lone individual against all the dumb "higher ups" in the DOD who didn't want GPS, etc. It is a prototypical American novel of an individual overcoming the bureaucracy and I have grown tired of such fantasies over the years.

And engrossing and thorough history of GPS

I had no idea of how deep and how long the development of the modern GPS system Took them came about. This is an outstanding history of navigation and GPS. Absolutely recommended.

Really enjoyed this book

this is a quite interesting book There is enough technical information to be informative without being overwhelming and enough stories to keep things interesting.
it really shows how important GPS has become in the modern world in ways that I never knew about.
kept my attention through the entire book.

Well researched and written

History of gps and also technical details of implementation, geography and geodesy. Interesting. Stories of early navigation by James Cook and Tupaia, although I am not sure what Rube Goldberg has to do with Mars☺ . Also good talk about NGA and space program.

I'm going to listen to the entire book again!

The book was phenomenal, exceeds my expectations. I will listen to it again to pick up anything I missed the first time!