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Chargement... You Are Here: From the Compass to GPS, the History and Future of How We Find Ourselvespar Hiawatha Bray
   Aucun Actuellement, il n'y a pas de discussions au sujet de ce livre.  KelMunger | Jun 5, 2014 |  aucune critique | ajouter une critique
"The story of the rise of modern navigation technology, from radio location to GPS-and the consequent decline of privacy What does it mean to never get lost? You Are Here examines the rise of our technologically aided era of navigational omniscience-or how we came to know exactly where we are at all times. In a sweeping history of the development of location technology in the past century, Bray shows how radio signals created to carry telegraph messages were transformed into invisible beacons to guide ships and how a set of rapidly-spinning wheels steered submarines beneath the polar ice cap. But while most of these technologies were developed for and by the military, they are now ubiquitous in our everyday lives. Our phones are now smart enough to pinpoint our presence to within a few feet-and nosy enough to share that information with governments and corporations. Filled with tales of scientists and astronauts, inventors and entrepreneurs, You Are Here tells the story of how humankind ingeniously solved one of its oldest and toughest problems-only to herald a new era in which it's impossible to hide. "-- Aucune description trouvée dans une bibliothèque |
Discussion en coursAucunCouvertures populaires  
 Google Books — Chargement...GenresClassification décimale de Melvil (CDD)910.285History and Geography Geography and Travel Geography and Travel Miscellany; world travel guides Auxiliary techniques and procedures; apparatus, equipment, materials Computer applications; Geographic information systems, GPSClassification de la Bibliothèque du CongrèsÉvaluationMoyenne: (3.8)
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You Are Here: From the Compass to GPS, the History and Future of How We Find Ourselves by Hiawatha Bray (Basic Books, $27.99).
Knowing where we are is almost as important as knowing who we are, at least so far as humans are concerned. No matter how Zen our aspirations, being “lost” is a frightening prospect for most of us, and that’s true even when “lost” means on a street that we don’t know in our own home town.
Hiawatha Bray, a journalist with the Boston Globe, has written an entertaining and engaging history of the ways we’ve used to establish our location, including thumbnail sketches of navigation and cartography, as well as taking us all the way to Google Earth.
Admit it. You’ve used Google Street View to get a picture of where you’re going. It works really well for those of us more attuned to landmarks than street numbers.
Bray’s got the experienced journalist’s knack for illustrating what might otherwise be boring technological stories with narratives and characters, and that makes this a very interesting book. He’s also got some insight into the long-range effects of global satellite positioning and the surveillance effects of data mining—one of the more unnerving, although not surprises, reveals in this book is that algorithms now need only three month’s worth of location data on an individual to predict where he or she will go next.
This one’s a lot of fun, and would make a nice gift for someone who’s perpetually making wrong turns.
reviewed by Kel Munger on Lit/Rant: http://litrant.tumblr.com/post/86396538178/wandering-along-the-way-you-are-here-... (