5 ms·
The Political Path to GPS: How war and peace forged the universal map
- mrguyorama 8y agoShouldn't it be called "Global" map? Not Universal?
- objectivetruth 8y ago"Universal" in English can also mean "relevant to everyone" in addition to "The Universe." And by "everyone," we're not pedantically including potential extra-terrestrials :-)
- walrus01 8y agoI don't know how you can mention the history of GPS, politics, and not include this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Air_Lines_Flight_007 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Air_Lines_Flight_007 It was one of the biggest reasons why the military-only GPS system eventually became available for civilian use.
- gandhium 8y agoI'd expected to see a mention of Korean Boeing that was shot down by Soviets, which prompted Reagan to make GPS available for civilians. As in [0] "President Reagan announced on September 16, 1983, that the Global Positioning System (GPS) would be made available for civilian use, free of charge, once completed in order to avert similar navigational errors in the future." [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Air_Lines_Flight_007 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Air_Lines_Flight_007
- maxxxxx 8y agoThat's a nice example for a reasonable reaction from politics. Good to know!
- 21 8y agoJust imagine if GPS was developed today. There would be widespread blaming of programmers involved because "they are writing software for targeting missiles used to kill people".
- mikeash 8y agoI’m not sure if those are supposed to be scare quotes or just the regular kind, but just in case: that was exactly the original purpose of it, and not just kill people, but kill hundreds of millions of them. I imagine the only reason it didn’t get protests is because it was relatively obscure.
- 21 8y agoI was making a parallel with the outrage over the Google army contract.
- baddox 8y agoAnd I believe mikeash was pointing out that, indeed, the parallel is an accurate one.
- mikeash 8y agoRight. That is, it wouldn’t have been people blowing things out of proportion because of a perceived tie to military applications, but a reasonable response to a system whose major purpose was to facilitate the deaths of millions.
- nradov 8y agoThe military side of GPS was more intended for killing retail rather than wholesale. ICBMs and strategic bombers have always relied more on stellar and inertial navigation since they knew they couldn't rely on GPS in a WWIII scenario.
- mikeash 8y ago