Wiki tells me that on this day in 2000, Bill Clinton “announce[d] that accurate GPS access would no longer be restricted to the United States military.” Which, in turn, makes it possible for me to update this post, from back when this blog was just emerging from the primordial ooze. Only Kathy and Silbey read us back then. Huh, I guess not much has changed. Anyway, here’s the post.
Historian, you say. Nope, I’m a futurist. At least for the moment. And here’s what I see: the GPS is the next ubiquitous gadget, the toy/tool that everyone will have within the next five years. And here’s why: with a GPS, you never have to be lost again, never have to ask for directions again (what will the gender stereotypers do?), never have to contend with the anxiety of wondering if you really know where you’re going or where you are.
Several months ago, while visiting my hometown of Cleveland, a friend from graduate school happened to be there as well. Together we drove to a restaurant for a bad meal (f-ing Cleveland). Then he needed to get a gift for the children of his hosts. He said that we’d go to a toy store that I’d never heard of in a part of town to which I’d never been. I began sweating, a combination of worry over getting lost and host anxiety, because I should have known everything about C-town. He said, seeing my discomfort: “Don’t worry; I’ve got a GPS.” To which I replied: “Why? What are you, planning an invasion or something? Or are you a door-to-door widget salesman? Or just obsessed with the latest latest?” I’m funny, by the way. He disagrees. Anyway, his electronic navigator took us right to where he wanted to go, no muss no fuss. I bought one the next day. From Costco. Which pays its employees a living wage and gives them health care.
And I love my GPS. My five-year-old son calls it, because of the lovely mechanical female voice, my “girlfriend.” And my wife thinks it’s great. I took it with me on a roadtrip to Canada last year. Ottawa, which otherwise would have seemed overwhelming (nobody, by the way, has ever before been overwhelmed by milquetoast Ottawa), was easily comprehended.
But of course, given my neuroses and scholarly interests, I have to ask: what’s the catch? Technological dependence, I think, along with creeping imperialism. Another electronic doodad just makes me ever more reliant on stuff to keep my head above water. And maps, which have always been part of the imperialist project (see Graham Burnett or Susan Schulten if you don’t believe me), are now even more so. Using satellites, originally put in place for military purposes, only adds to the sense of dread. Plus there’s the whole surveillance state thing. My GPS surely makes it easier for The Man to watch me. And keep me down.
More than that, though, I wonder what never getting lost means for people’s perceptions of the non-human world. We already have, because of an incredible array of technologies, an outsized sense of our mastery of nature — sorry environmental history community, but that word is just too convenient to ignore. Steamboats made the Mississippi Valley seem small. Railroads collapsed space and time in the West. Automobilies privatized and democratized these advantages. Air travel has apparently shrunk the globe to the size of a jawbreaker. And the internet means that we’re all the Borg, right? So now what? Not only am I never alone (my trusty cellphone), but I never misplace myself. Unknown locales, which once would have seemed daunting, reminding me of my insignificance in a world much bigger and more labyrinthine than I could ever really hope to fathom, now fit inside a little box that I can afix to my dashboard and bring with me anywhere. I can even upload another set of maps so that I don’t get lost in the woods. The epistemological ramifications are breathtaking.
Still, no matter the unintended consequences and looming threats, including having my GPS hector me for missing a turn, it’s only a matter of time until we all own and rely on one. (Seriously, you should buy stock in Garmin/Magellan/Tom Tom now.) Then it’s just a short trip to an increased sense that we really can control nature, along with all manner of pathway dependencies. But at least we’ll be able to get around Ottawa. Or wherever else we find ourselves.
23 comments
May 2, 2008 at 9:35 pm
Vance Maverick
Ottawa, which otherwise would have seemed overwhelming (nobody, by the way, has ever before been overwhelmed by milquetoast Ottawa), was easily comprehended.
I think you’re saying that the GPS’s triumph over Ottawa exaggerated your sense of what the mysteries of Ottawa would have been without it. Seriously — note how you assert both that Ottawa would have seemed overwhelming, and that nobody was ever overwhelmed before.
I don’t doubt that these will become ubiquitous and undowithoutable. But in using them, we’ll rely less on older, simpler technologies that worked after all pretty well — like asking directions.
May 2, 2008 at 9:42 pm
ari
I think it depends on who you asked — if you ask me.
May 2, 2008 at 9:47 pm
andrew
A few years ago I spent a couple of nights in a jail in Ottawa. Actually it was a former jail, now a hostel. I got in by train and it would have been overwhelming to try to get from the station to the city, except there was a bus going there so I caught it.
The bus driver, being a friendly Canadian, struck up a conversation during which I discovered that after the blackout a week earlier, the city still lacked full power. Everything I wanted to see – and this being Ottawa, that’s not much – was still closed. I ended up sitting at an outdoor table near the National Gallery reading for hours. Until I got sick of the book I’d brought and bought a book I already had read a few years earlier, which I began to read again.
Ottawa’s easy to get around on foot with a map and a few glances at street signs.
May 2, 2008 at 9:51 pm
ari
I have family in Ottawa, so I go occasionally. It always reminds me of Cleveland. But without the excitement.
May 2, 2008 at 9:57 pm
andrew
When I visited, I actually thought I’d be back for dissertation research, which I was looking forward to.* But for purely tourist purposes there wasn’t a lot there I was planning to visit (and I still have to go back to see that National Gallery sometime).
*The topic eventually fell through. When I abandoned the dissertation, I abandoned a different topic.
May 2, 2008 at 10:05 pm
ari
The National Gallery, designed by Moshe Safdie, is nice. And Parliament merits a visit. The Rideau Canal is, um, a canal. Except in winter, when it’s a really long ice rink. Beyond that, Montreal is only a couple of hours away.
May 2, 2008 at 10:15 pm
andrew
Parliament was closed to tourists, too. I think there was enough power for staff and others who were supposed to be there (same with the archives, which had some kind of display, but as far as I know not the kind of worshipful document display the US archives has.)
I had just come from Montreal (actually Quebec City, but I’d been in Montreal a few days before that).
May 2, 2008 at 10:25 pm
ari
I used to have family in Montreal — including grandparents. Which meant that I got to spend tons of time there. What a great city. Come to think of it, I actually almost went to McGill. But then I realized that it was, to a very great extent, a commuter school. So I went to Wisconsin instead. I’ve never really considered how different my life might be had I gone to McGill. Hear that, biographers? That’s a moment of historical contingency in the Ari Kelman story.
May 2, 2008 at 10:31 pm
Vance Maverick
Inspiring counterfactual reveries. Montreal is great, indeed. Had you not taken that turning, though, would you have found your way to Flat Orthogonal College Town in the Central Valley?
To approach my point another way — Paris before Haussmann was a good bit more complicated than Ottawa today, and yet it was traversed every day by a population that mostly couldn’t read, let alone use a GPS.
May 2, 2008 at 10:44 pm
andrew
And to re-state Ari’s point, the state had a much harder time “seeing” that Paris than it did the post-Haussmann one.
The Paris history museum – Musee Carnevalet, or something like that – had an interesting collection of pre-street number shop/house signs and markings when I visited it about ten years ago.
May 2, 2008 at 10:52 pm
ari
Oh, I see what you’re saying Vance. But my point has more to do with terra nova, and the way that the GPS obliterates such a concept. For example, Ottawa, though I had been there before, was pretty much all new to me on my last trip. Absent my GPS, I would have tried to map my route in advance, would have gotten lost at least twice, would have asked directions at least three times, and would have been a bundle of nerves. On the one hand, that doesn’t sound great. On the other, though, I would have been a much more humble observers of my environs, would have paid much more attention to where I was going, would have had a keener sense of the new. Instead, my GPS just told me where to go. And I followed its directions, infantalized by a machine. Again. And the world around me, which otherwise would have been inscrutable, hardly mattered at all. I was totally comfortable in my private space.
May 3, 2008 at 12:35 am
Ron Tunning
Even when traveling I prefer to explore rather than hurry toward a destination. For this reason I’ve intentionally avoided the Interstate highway system on two occasions when I’d decided a road trip between the east and west coasts.
While getting lost, especially in an urban area, can be stressful if pressed for time or trying to keep an appointment, generally I enjoy meandering around and discovering things I would never have known existed otherwise.
Perhaps a part of me simply rejects such control and order imposed by a GPS system.
May 3, 2008 at 3:19 am
blueollie
Funny, but I used to use a GPS for measuring my running and walking courses. The result? Even on my 10-15 mile courses, I was rarely off by more than .1-.2 miles or so, hence I don’t use my old GPS watch and I haven’t bought an upgrade. In fact, I haven’t used one in years. :)
May 3, 2008 at 4:26 am
The Modesto Kid
maps, which have always been part of the imperialist project, are now even more so
Nicely observed.
I (who like maps) have a good enough sense of direction I can’t really see using one of these. But your post makes me think it might be just the thing to make a more confident navigator of Ellen.
May 3, 2008 at 6:08 am
silbey
Don’t worry; when we go to war with the Chinese, the first thing they’ll do is shoot down the GPS satellites.
May 3, 2008 at 6:03 pm
Michael H Schneider
I suppose it all depends on what sort of GPS you get, and how you use it. I bought a simple one back in 2000. B&W screen, no voice, doesn’t figure routes or tell me where to turn. It has a built-in map with all the major roads in the US, and it pus the map on the screen with a little triangle that’s me. Scale is adjustible so a screen can show 1500 feet or 1500 miles or anything in between.
I’ve used it drive cross country a half dozen times, never taking an Interstate. It’s great for the common questions:
“hmm, are we still on highway X, or did it turn off back there and we missed it?
“Do you suppose if we took this County Road AA it’d take us to Highway Y?”
“Wandering around this small town was fun, now which way is the highway from wherever we are? Or which way is the town square?”
I carry one of those road atlases with a page for every state, so I can get the big picture. But when the plan for getting from Albuquerque to Wilmington NC is “go north to Ft Garland and turn right” the GPS is great when wandering vaguely eastward on county roads through Arkansas.
I don’t depend on it any more than I used to depend on paper maps But it never needs folding, takes little room, I never curse myself for failing to anticipate I’d need a map of western Tennessee, and I’m never scratching my head wondering “that last town we passed – was that East Amana, West Amana, Amana Center, or something else?”
p.s. No, I didn’t buy GRMN at the IPO at $20, to my regret. Nor did I buy it at $150 (post split) before it fell to $45. I never did buy it. Magellan isnt public, I don’t think.
May 4, 2008 at 9:33 am
Adam
About GPS making it easier for the Man to keep his eye on you: if it makes you feel better, your GPS unit isn’t an active system. That is, it doesn’t send out any signals, it only receives them. The GPS satellites send out time stamps, and the receiver in your car uses the time stamps from 3 different satellites to triangulate your position. Amazingly, it’s not even that high tech, except for being in space. Another cool thing about it is that we can only make it work because of our understanding of special and general relativity. Because of the speeds the satellites move and the difference in gravity they feel (due to their altitude), their time stamps would quickly lose sync (within seconds, I think) if they didn’t have built in corrections.
May 4, 2008 at 11:24 am
Shosha
When I’m navigating around the city, I look at my GPS more often than the street. Driving can get hazardous.
May 4, 2008 at 2:49 pm
SEK
Being a poor graduate student — for another month now, after which I’ll just be poor — I don’t own a GPS. But despite the obvious advantages to never getting lost, such devices routinize (HA!) cities such that you’ll only ever find what you’re looking for. You head to a new, unfamiliar city, and you’re likely to look for the familiar restaurant/hotel/&c. The unique and unubiquitous venues you only find in your wandering will never appear in your map of the city. It’s Sunday, so I’m a bit wistful/curmudgeonly, so I’m tempted to oppose arrivals at destinations to the trips to them, but I’ll resist.
May 4, 2008 at 8:11 pm
ari
Adam, truth be told, the government already tracks me using the implant in my molar. So they don’t really need my GPS. And Shosha, I sometimes find myself gazing at the small screen and ignoring the traffic around me. That’s usually the best time to make a cell phone call, I think, just to let someone know where to find my will. As for you SEK, you are grumpy. But of course I agree. Still, I’m not giving up the GPS. Because, if I want to experience a place, the car isn’t the way to do that anyway. I try to walk or bike to learn new landscapes.
May 4, 2008 at 9:38 pm
Dance
SEK, wouldn’t having a GPS allow one to wander without fear? That is, you don’t have to ask it “give me directions to the nearest TGI Friday”. You can just aimlessly drive, and program directions back to the hotel when you are tired of wandering.
May 4, 2008 at 9:46 pm
andrew
Alternatively, give it a search function and extensive business information and then you could type in, say, “books” and discover and find (so to speak) a used bookstore that you may not have ever realized existed without already having detailed local knowledge of an unfamiliar place. Maybe this could be called a spatial version of the idea of the long tail, or something.
Note: I don’t actually have a GPS or plan to get one any time soon, but I use online maps a lot.
May 5, 2008 at 1:13 am
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