如果沒有GPS定位 我們會迷路嗎

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年美國勞動節那天，12名軍官在美國華盛頓特區五角大樓一棟廢棄建築的一間辦公室裏祕密開會，討論一種新的全球衛星導航系統。多數歷史學家（更別提選民了）對締造了現在被稱爲全球定位系統(GPS)的網絡的這次會議幾乎一無所知。這是個遺憾。

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.

我在讀美國記者格雷格•米爾納(Greg Milner)撰寫的新書《定位》(Pinpoint)，該書試圖解釋GPS如何誕生以及現在如何運轉。它是我讀過的最扣人心絃、令人興奮但也最令人震驚的現代科技圖書之一。如今，我們多數人都對GPS悄悄上癮——不僅是在駕車時，而且在用我們的智能手機和其他設備運行很多功能時都是這樣。

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.”

米爾納估計，目前全球已有大約50億部使用GPS的設備，包括30億部智能手機，創造了210億美元的GPS經濟。“這個非同一般的系統最初是美國的一個軍事應用，目的是提高投彈精度並保證轟炸機飛行員的安全，”米爾納寫道，“（但）如今它的觸角無所不在。”

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.

就像網絡經濟的很大部分那樣，多數人不瞭解GPS如何工作；也不知道整個系統是由美國空軍一個駐紮在科羅拉多泉附近的鮮爲人知的中隊管理的。如果你研究一下GPS網絡，你會清楚地發現，GPS的故事值得引起更多關注，特別是因爲我們亟需考慮如果GPS失靈可能會發生什麼情況。

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.

無論按照什麼標準，這都是一個非同一般的故事，部分原因是GPS既涉及科學，還觸及人類學。正如考古學家、歷史學家和人類學家知道的那樣，古往今來，人類對周圍世界的想象發生了巨大變化。在多數前現代社會中，人們頭腦中沒有關於世界的客觀“地圖”；他們認爲世界是從自己的家發散出去的輪廓。從古希臘起，很多文化認爲，太陽圍繞地球轉動。

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.

當人們開始帶上計時器環遊世界，並用望遠鏡觀察天空時，他們的看法改變了。波蘭天文學家尼古拉斯•哥白尼(Nicolaus Copernicus)提出了他的革命性看法，即太陽（而非地球）是太陽系的中心。此後，我們學會了製作越來越精準的客觀（而非主觀）地圖。

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再次改變了視角。它利用四枚或更多GPS衛星同時發出的信號（來自環繞地球運行的大約30枚衛星）來定位；它把我們放在了我們自己地圖的中心。

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們的周圍環境爲我們指路，但它也讓其他一些重要的事情發生了：我們現在也可以爲其他物體導航了。

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.

當GPS最終成熟時，這種技術最初用於精確制導炸彈，最引人注目的是在第一次海灣戰爭中使用。如今，這些衛星爲各種物體導航，從飛機到油輪，從醫院手術到金融交易。當然還有我們的汽車。

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.

就技術飛躍而言，這幾乎像是一個奇蹟，而且它可能給其他似乎很難解決的問題（例如氣候變化）帶來一些讓人樂觀的理由。

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.

危險在於我們越依賴這種神奇的技術，我們就可能會變得越脆弱。例如，米爾納援引了神經學家的一些有趣研究，這些研究表明，當人們依賴GPS導航時，他們停止在認知層面與自己的周圍環境互動，他們的大腦似乎會發生變化。

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.

更令人擔心的是，隨着現代交通、工業和基礎設施網絡變得更依賴GPS，如果這些衛星偏離軌道，那麼這些系統可能完全崩潰的風險日益上升。美國軍方堅稱，這種情況永遠不會發生，因爲他們正致力於讓GPS系統萬無一失。另一個可能支持這種說法的因素是，具有諷刺意味的是，就連美國的敵人也依賴GPS。例如，“伊拉克和黎凡特伊斯蘭國”(ISIS)在其攻擊中使用了帶有GPS功能的智能手機。

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.

關於現代網絡世界真正可怕的一點在於，如今一切都不是真正堅不可摧的。因此，或許這個故事給我們的真正收穫在於，當你下次坐進汽車，打開智能手機或者做其他事情時，你應該向那些環繞地球運行、肉眼看不見的衛星默默道聲謝謝；然後考慮一下如果GPS突然失靈，我們會怎麼做。這種想法會讓人茫然不知所措的。