Going Forward - GPS Declassified: From Smart Bombs to Smartphones - page 200

in 2012 with darpa to develop a system for warfighters with a heads-up dis-
play that superimposes battlefield data on the user's normal field of vision. 127
How these technologies will evolve over the long term is anyone's guess.
More than two hundred thousand people already have cochlear implants that
transmit sounds from external microphones to their auditory nerves, and Bos-
ton neurosurgeons have wired an external lens directly to a blind man's optic
nerve, allowing him to see colors and read large-print text. 128 Futuristic enter-
tainment often presages real life, even when exaggerating dangers for dramatic
effect. Warner Brothers in August 2012 released H+: The Digital Series , a collec-
tion of short-format dystopian science fiction episodes on YouTube. Humans
in this near-future world have augmented reality neural implants, connecting
them to the Internet 24/7 but also exposing them personally to computer
viruses. 129 It is impossible to predict whether pop-up geolocation data—whether
displayed in glasses, superimposed on our retinas, or mainlined into our cere-
bral cortex—may eventually do to street signs what Internet search has done to
the Yellow Pages, but it seems likely that gps will remain integral to communi-
cation, navigation, and augmented reality devices, whatever form they assume.
Looking back over the past half century of technological change it is clear that
some things people assumed were inevitable have not happened and others
emerged unexpectedly. In the early 1960s The Jetsons made youngsters believe
flying cars would be commonplace by now. 130 In the late 1960s books like The
Population Bomb , by Paul Ehrlich, made a case for imminent worldwide famine,
but advances in food production derailed that prediction. Today gps- enabled
precision agriculture is leading another wave of productivity as its adoption
spreads worldwide. During the early decades of development that led to global
navigation satellite systems, many foresaw a new era of precision warfare. Some
anticipated a spillover to civil aviation and ground transportation. A few envi-
sioned worldwide-synchronized time and handheld devices for communication
and navigation. Nobody predicted with clarity how putting gps capability into
the hands of individuals would spawn location-based services, enhanced social
networks, or many other imaginative uses entrepreneurs have conceived.
As we approach the twentieth anniversary of gps becoming operational, the
pace of new application development, the diversity of uses, and the extent to
which gps-based technologies continue to revolutionize everyday activities
suggest that human ingenuity is far from exhausting its potential benefits.
However, we have no guidance system to chart where we will take the tech-
nology— or where gps technology will take us.