Past, Future, Present: The GPS System
Imagine a world where no device is needed to find your way through unknown locations. With just a thought you are able to map a route to get to your destination. That is what the future could be capable of achieving in the future. Though before we get too far into the future, let’s take a look at the origins of the GPS, how far it has come with the power of technology, along with what the future holds.
Before the introduction of the GPS to the general population, personal navigation was often done through “paper maps”. Users would have to purchase maps that have the route mapped for them or plan the route themselves. This was very much a hassle because depending on the familiarity with the route users would often have to take a peek while driving or pull over to see where they are going. Another problem with paper maps was that some places simply didn’t have maps for some areas and that made navigating difficult. A glaring problem of these maps was that as cities and landscape changes, it made older maps obsolete and they had to constantly be updated.
The origins of the GPS date back to the Cold War with the Soviet Union launching the Sputnik satellite into space. This prompted the United States to conduct experiments on using satellite navigation to track submarines. With the U.S launching the first NAVSTAR satellite in 1974 and several more in subsequent years, the U.S military had first access to GPS. Only the military had access to the GPS, but that all changed when a Korean passenger plane was shot down by Soviet Union jets. After realizing that the GPS could’ve stopped that incident from happening, President Ronald Regan opened the GPS to the public, the modification that the public version would have its accuracy fuzzed to a radius of 100 meters to ensure the military still had the best data, which was known as selective availability.
In 1989, Magellan (GPS Company) released the first-ever handheld GPS called the NAV 1000, after the first fully operational satellite was launched by the air force. Then in 1999, mobile phone manufacturer, Benefon, introduced the first commercial GPS phone named the ESC!. In the year 2000, selective availability was ended for greater commercial GPS usage. Qualcomm successfully completed tests for GPS features on mobile phones, which ushered the world into the current state of GPS.
In present times, GPS can be accessed by many different devices. Some notable ones are smartphones, cars, and computers. Using the GPS to navigate can pretty much be done by any smart device that is connected to cellular data or wifi. It is also very intuitive and easy to use unlike the “paper maps”. Current innovations for GPS are to increase the accuracy and the plan to do that is through the launch of GPS III satellites by Lockheed Martin, which will make GPS accuracy 3 times more for the public and 8 times more for military uses.
Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla, co-founded the company Neuralink. The main product that is being developed by Neuralink is a brain implant that will allow humans to communicate with computers. Neuralink has stated its mission is to have a product that will help disabled people. For example: Helping parapelligic people walk again and cure various brain disorders. With these goals in mind, it feels like Neuralink has a lot of possible implementations and can do many things.
With the introduction of Neuralink and other companies trying to implement systems that will develop brain-machine interfaces that connect humans and computers, the future for the GPS can become pretty imaginative. If Neuralink is successful, I can see a world where the device connects your brain to your phone and when you input a location you go to, the route and directions are all in your brain so you now know how to get there. Another thing that Neuralink can allow future GPS to do, is to transmit routes to one another through Neuralink. I think these two concepts are very feasible as long as the Neuralink is able to do what it is described to do.
Now let’s try to think beyond what our modern-day technology could ever hope to achieve. Perhaps humans will bring computers directly into their lives, by implanting some sort of device that allows the brain to directly communicate with satellites. That way any person with the device will be capable of only using their brain to communicate with the GPS satellites and completely remove the middle man like phones and cars. Another far off concept could be a future evolution of GPS due to flying cars and such. If there are flying cars that would remove the usage of GPS on the roads and instead on the “roads” that the flying cars would use.
The future of the GPS is virtually endless and is only limited by time and human creativity. Despite how much the GPS system has changed in the past 100 years, there can still be many more changes and innovations.Technology has already been heavily incorporated into daily life, so what’s stopping people from bringing it directly into the body?
