About this item
The story of the rise of modern navigation technology, from radio location to GPSand 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 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.
About the Author
I've been a reporter and columnist at the Boston Globe for nearly two decades, and scored an Overseas Press Club award for my writing about the Internet in Africa. I spend nearly all my time rebooting, recharging and rewriting, except when I'm reading books or acting as an assistant to my fashion-photographer wife. The great ongoing adventure of my life is an effort to adopt three children from the Democratic Republic of Congo--relatives of my wife, who's from Kinshasa. It's a tough town, but surprisingly well-mapped. During a visit there last summer, my smartphone unerringly guided me wherever I wanted to go. My wonder at this amazing ability to find one's way, anywhere on earth, is what led me to write this book.
