Consumer global positioning systems (GPS) have been around for the past 20 years or so. I remember using a GPS receiver in the late 1990s and connecting to a laptop through a USB cable and navigating through the laptop. We have come a long way since then, with almost every current smartphone having GPS capabilities and showing precise location-based guidance in every part of the world. This book, Pinpoint, tries to unravel the story of the GPS in a novel fashion. I would like to pinpoint (no pun intended) that the book does not delve into the technical details of GPS in as much detail as I had expected. It is a story of the GPS technology and how it impacts our daily lives.

The first half digs into the origin of the GPS system, the Cold War that spawned a satellite war between the US and the Soviets. One of the first mobile GPS drives by engineers of HP in 1981 across Interstate 280 is described in great detail. The second part is on the cultural shift GPS has introduced into our daily lives. Though there are many technical benefits in using GPS-based navigation, the author gives lots of stories involving death by GPS. The GPS system is often too good, and people trust it as it gives directions in deserts and in extreme places like Death Valley, making people wander off too much by relying on a machine. Some people never make it back. Such episodes and an overdependence on GPS are culturally examined by the author. Other issues like what effect GPS has on memory are explored in great detail. We seem to have forgotten the ability to remember phone numbers because everything is in the phone. Likewise, for directions, we rely on the machines almost every time. It will be interesting for a student researcher to dig deeper into some of these aspects and how they affect us. If you are looking for a more mathematical or nuanced explanation of GPS systems, you will have to look elsewhere. This book achieves its purpose well in terms of the history and cultural ramifications of GPS systems.

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