Synopses & Reviews
The story of the rise of modern navigation technology, from radio location to GPSand the consequent decline of privacyWhat does it mean to never get lost? You Are Here examines the rise of our technologically aided era of navigational omniscienceor 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 feetand 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 problemsonly to herald a new era in which its impossible to hide.
Review
You Are Here is a wonderful book, with lots of engaging stories about the engineers and engineering that have brought us the magical navigational gadgets that keep us on track. Ironically, this excellently written book is one to get lost in.”
Henry Petroski, author of The Essential Engineer and The House with Sixteen Handmade Doors
Review
A superlative choice for technology buffs who want a historical perspective on location and navigation technologies.”
Library Journal
[A] breezy history of our ever-dwindling ability to lose our way.”
Wall Street Journal
Bray provides an entertaining account of how our ancestors learned to find their way around their neighborhood, then around a larger area, then around the world.”
Roanoke Times
Bright, well-written and highly informative.”
Kirkus
This book is a fascinating journey through the development of modern navigational systems and the brilliant foresight of the inventors. Definitely an entertaining read.”
John Huth, author of The Lost Art of Finding Our Way
You Are Here is a wonderful book, with lots of engaging stories about the engineers and engineering that have brought us the magical navigational gadgets that keep us on track. Ironically, this excellently written book is one to get lost in.”
Henry Petroski, author of The Essential Engineer and The House with Sixteen Handmade Doors
Hiawatha Brays thrill ride through the world of GIS, Google Earth, and location tracking helps us understand how the e-maps that shoved aside the familiar paper map are both a convenience and a threat.”
Mark Monmonier, author of How to Lie with Maps
From Foucault to Foursquare, the history of location technology is one of graft, ingenuity and, ultimately, shopping. Hiawatha Bray maps out the journey with clarity and wit, and ends with a warning: now we know where we are, do we really want to be here? A timely, searching book if ever there was.”
Simon Garfield, author of On the Map
Synopsis
Over the course of the twentieth century, there was a major shift in practices of mapping, as centuries-old methods of land surveying and print publication were incrementally displaced by electronic navigation systems. William Rankin argues that although this shift did not render traditional maps obsolete, it did revise the goals of the mapping sciences as a whole. Military cartographers and civilian agencies alike developed new techniques for tasks that exceeded the capabilities of paper, such as aiming long-range guns, navigating in featureless environments, regularizing air travel, or drilling for offshore oil.
After the Map reveals the major conceptual ramifications of these and other changes and in doing so offers a new way of understanding the central political-geographic shift of the twentieth century. Seen first and foremost as affecting a transformation in the nature of
territory, the change from paper mapping to electronic systems is not a story about technological improvement or the wizardry of precision; instead, it is about the
kind of geographic knowledgeandmdash;and therefore governanceandmdash;that can exist in the first place.and#160;
About the Author
Hiawatha Bray is a technology reporter for the
Boston Globe, where he has been on staff since 1995. He has also written for
Wired,
Black Enterprise,
Fast Company and
Christianity Today. Bray lives in Quincy, Massachusetts.