Pinpoint Audiobook By Greg Milner cover art

Pinpoint

How GPS Is Changing Technology, Culture, and Our Minds

Preview

Try for $0.00
Prime logo Prime members: New to Audible?
Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
Premium Plus auto-renews for $14.95/mo after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Pinpoint

By: Greg Milner
Narrated by: Eric Michael Summerer
Try for $0.00

$14.95/month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy for $15.47

Buy for $15.47

Confirm purchase
Pay using card ending in
By confirming your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and Amazon's Privacy Notice. Taxes where applicable.
Cancel

About this listen

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
Philosophy Technology & Society Mars Solar System
activate_Holiday_promo_in_buybox_DT_T2

Critic reviews

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

What listeners say about Pinpoint

Average customer ratings
Overall
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    57
  • 4 Stars
    27
  • 3 Stars
    17
  • 2 Stars
    2
  • 1 Stars
    0
Performance
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    53
  • 4 Stars
    30
  • 3 Stars
    4
  • 2 Stars
    1
  • 1 Stars
    0
Story
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    51
  • 4 Stars
    20
  • 3 Stars
    14
  • 2 Stars
    2
  • 1 Stars
    1

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.

Sort by:
Filter by:
  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

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

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

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.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

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...

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

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!

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

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”.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    3 out of 5 stars

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.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

3 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

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.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

2 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

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.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

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.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

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!

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!