Pinpoint

“GPS guides our world. Here at last is the amazing and well-told story of where it came from, how it works, and where it—and we—are going.” – Richard Rhodes, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Energy“Gripping…GPS is an engineering marvel, a global utility and a source of new threat all at once.” – New York Times Book Review”[Milner] delves deep into the dense web of intersections between GPS—’the world’s only free utility’—and all those other utilities we vitally depend on, with interesting side excursions into earthquake-detection and the GPS-assisted monitoring of offenders.” – Guardian”[A] compelling exploration of how GPS became so ubiquitous—and what we lose when it’s all we know of navigation.” – Matthew Daddona - Outside“Milner is a brisk and funny guide.” – Konstantin Kakaes - Wall Street Journal“A compelling exploration of how GPS became so ubiquitous—and what we lose when it’s all we know of navigation.” – Outside“Fascinating…Milner expertly deconstructs the implications of this monumental shift in human life.” – Tim Adams - Observer“Milner’s detailed examples will leave you questioning the ways in which GPS has infiltrated our lives.” – Science“In Pinpoint, Greg Milner gives us a much-needed account of GPS, its history, philosophy, and the overwhelming consequences of its success. Funny, scary, and tremendously readable, Pinpoint will be an eye-opening thrill for anyone who has watched their blue dot dance around an online map.” – Andrew Blum, author of Tubes“Whenever people theorize about the collision of technology and culture, the Internet tends to consume all the oxygen in the room. But there is another global system that’s taking over our lives in an even more insidious fashion, with stranger implications for the future of humanity. Pinpoint dissects the modern age of mapping and shows the hidden dangers of a world where nothing is hidden at all.” – Chuck Klosterman”[An] entirely brilliant history of that most loved-and-loathed new technology, GPS. Every page was a treasure-house of fascinations: my temptation after finishing was to begin the book all over again, there being so much to absorb, all of it crucially important to understanding our world’s dependence on one of modern civilization’s new-made fundamentals.” – Simon Winchester“The reason that brains are so good at storing maps is because the brain is a map, and our collective internal map is now migrating somewhere else. Greg Milner’s Pinpoint is a fascinating chronicle of how this happened and why—captured before the details had a chance to escape.” – George Dyson

Greg Milner is the author of Pinpoint and Perfecting Sound Forever, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. His writing has appeared in Wired, New York, Slate, Village Voice, Salon, Spin, and Rolling Stone. He lives with his family in Brooklyn, New York.