On Labor Day, in 1973, a dozen military officials furtively gathered in an office of a deserted Pentagon building in Washington DC to discuss a new global satellite-based navigation system. Most historians, never mind voters, know almost nothing about that meeting, which launched the network now known as the global positioning system, or GPS. That is a pity.1973年美国劳动节那天，12名军官在美国华盛顿特区五角大楼一栋荒废建筑的一间办公室里秘密召开，辩论一种新的全球卫星导航系统。多数历史学家（更加别提选民了）对创下了现在被称作全球定位系统(GPS)的网络的这次会议完全一无所知。

这是个失望。I have been reading a new book, Pinpoint, by American journalist Greg Milner, which seeks to explain how GPS came into being and how it now operates. It is one of the most mesmerising and exhilarating, yet alarming modern technology books I’ve read. These days most of us have become stealthily addicted to GPS, not just when driving but also when performing many functions with our smartphones and other devices.我在读美国记者格雷格米尔纳(Greg Milner)编写的新书《定位》(Pinpoint)，该书企图说明GPS如何问世以及现在如何运转。

它是我读过的最扣人心弦、令人兴奋但也最令人震惊的现代科技图书之一。如今，我们多数人都对GPS悄悄成瘾——不仅是在驾车时，而且在用我们的智能手机和其他设备运营很多功能时都是这样。Milner calculates that there are already about five billion devices in the world that use GPS (including three billion smartphones), creating a $21bn GPS economy. “This extraordinary system began as an American military application, a way to improve the accuracy of bombs and keep bomber pilots safe,” Milner writes. “[But] today its tentacles are everywhere.”米尔纳估算，目前全球有数约50亿部用于GPS的设备，还包括30亿部智能手机，建构了210亿美元的GPS经济。“这个非同一般的系统最初是美国的一个军事应用于，目的是提升投弹精度并确保轰炸机飞行员的安全性，”米尔纳写到，“（但）如今它的触角无所不在。

”As with so much of our cyber economy, most of us have no clue how GPS works; nor that the entire system is run by an obscure squadron of the US Air Force based near Colorado Springs. If you start looking into the network, it becomes clear that the GPS story deserves far more attention — not least because we urgently need to think about what might happen if GPS breaks down.就像网络经济的很大部分那样，多数人不理解GPS如何工作；也不告诉整个系统是由美国空军一个驻守在科罗拉多泉附近的鲜为人知的中队管理的。如果你研究一下GPS网络，你不会确切地找到，GPS的故事有一点引发更加多注目，尤其是因为我们急需考虑到如果GPS失灵可能会再次发生什么情况。By any standards, it is an extraordinary tale, in part because GPS touches on anthropology as much as science. As archaeologists, historians and anthropologists know, the way humans imagine the world around them has varied enormously over time. In most premodern societies, people did not have objective “maps” of the world in their heads; instead, they perceived the world as contours radiating out from their home. From the ancient Greeks onwards, many cultures assumed that the sun revolved around the earth.无论按照什么标准，这都是一个非同一般的故事，部分原因是GPS既牵涉到科学，还看清人类学。正如考古学家、历史学家和人类学家告诉的那样，古往今来，人类对周围世界的想象再次发生了巨大变化。

在多数前现代社会中，人们头脑中没关于世界的客观“地图”；他们指出世界就是指自己的家收敛过来的轮廓。从古希腊起，很多文化指出，太阳环绕地球旋转。When people started roaming the globe with chronometers and peering at the sky with telescopes, it changed their perspective. The Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus developed his revolutionary idea that the sun, not the earth, was at the centre of the solar system. Since then, we have learnt to create objective — not subjective — maps with growing accuracy.当人们开始拿着计时器环游世界，后用望远镜仔细观察天空时，他们的观点转变了。

波兰天文学家尼古拉斯哥白尼(Nicolaus Copernicus)明确提出了他的革命性观点，即太阳（而非地球）是太阳系的中心。此后，我们学会了制作更加精准的客观（而非主观）地图。

GPS alters this perspective again. It uses signals from four or more GPS satellites at a time (out of about 30 orbiting the planet) to pinpoint our position; but it does so by putting us at the centre of our own map.GPS再度转变了视角。它利用四枚或更加多GPS卫星同时收到的信号（来自环绕着地球运营的约30枚卫星）来定位；它把我们放到了我们自己地图的中心。That lets us navigate our surroundings with once-unimaginable precision but it also enables something else to occur that is important: we can now guide other objects, too.它用以往不可想象的精度在我们的周围环境为我们指路，但它也让其他一些最重要的事情再次发生了：我们现在也可以为其他物体导航系统了。

When GPS finally came of age, this technology was initially used to guide bombs, most notably in the first Gulf war. Today those satellites guide everything from aircraft to oil tankers, from hospital operations to financial trades. And, of course, our cars.当GPS最后成熟期时，这种技术最初用作准确制导炸弹，最引人注目的是在第一次海湾战争中用于。如今，这些卫星为各种物体导航系统，从飞机到油轮，从医院手术到金融交易。当然还有我们的汽车。

As technological leaps go, this feels almost miraculous, and it might give some grounds for optimism in relation to other seemingly intractable problems, such as climate change.就技术进步而言，这完全看起来一个奇迹，而且它有可能给其他或许很难解决问题的问题（例如气候变化）带给一些让人悲观的理由。The danger is that the more we become dependent on this magical technology, the more potentially vulnerable we become, too. Milner cites some fascinating studies by neurologists, for example, which suggest that when people rely on GPS to navigate, they stop interacting with their environment in a cognitive sense, and their brains appear to change.危险性在于我们就越倚赖这种神秘的技术，我们就可能会显得就越薄弱。例如，米尔纳援引了神经学家的一些有意思研究，这些研究指出，当人们倚赖GPS导航系统时，他们暂停在理解层面与自己的周围环境对话，他们的大脑或许不会发生变化。

More worrying still, as our modern transport, industry and infrastructure networks become more reliant on GPS, there is a growing risk that these could break down completely if those satellites veer off course. The US military insists this will never happen because it is working to keep the system watertight. And one factor that may help them in that respect is that, ironically, even the US’s enemies depend on GPS. Isis, for example, uses GPS-enabled smartphones in its attacks.更加令人担心的是，随着现代交通、工业和基础设施网络显得更加倚赖GPS，如果这些卫星背离轨道，那么这些系统有可能几乎瓦解的风险日益下降。美国军方否认，这种情况总有一天会再次发生，因为他们于是以致力于让GPS系统万无一失。另一个有可能反对这种众说纷纭的因素是，具备嘲讽意味的是，就连美国的敌人也倚赖GPS。例如，“伊拉克和黎凡特伊斯兰国”(ISIS)在其反击中用于了具有GPS功能的智能手机。

The truly scary thing about our modern cyber world is that nothing now seems truly invulnerable. So perhaps the real moral of the tale is that the next time you get into a car, switch on a smartphone or do almost anything else, you should give silent thanks to those unseen satellites orbiting the earth; and then ponder what we would do if GPS suddenly stopped working. It’s a disorienting thought.关于现代网络世界确实可怕的一点在于，如今一切都不是确实坚不可摧的。因此，也许这个故事给我们的确实进账在于，当你下次坐进汽车，关上智能手机或者做到其他事情时，你应当向那些环绕着地球运营、肉眼看不到的卫星默默地道声谢谢；然后考虑一下如果GPS忽然失灵，我们不会怎么做。这种点子不会让人茫然不知所措的。

本文来源：PG电子平台-www.15juyou.com