GPS gives people a method for both assigning and using absolute coordinates

IN WHICH you are introduced to facts and concepts relating to the NAVSTAR Global Positioning System and have your first experience using a electronic tracking devices . 

A sports club in Seattle decided to mount a hunting expedition. They employed a guide who came well recommended, and whose own views of his abilities were greater still. Unfortunately, after two days, the group was completely, totally lost. “You told me you were the best guide in the State of Washington,” fumed the person responsible for hiring the guide. “I am, Iam” claimed the man defensively. “But just now I think we’re in Canada.” Stories like the one above should be told now (if at all), before they cease to be plausible. Actually, even at present, given the right equipment and a map of the general area, you could be led blindfolded to any spot in the great out-of-doors and determine exactly where you were. This happy capability is due to some ingenious electronics and a dozen billion dollars 1 spent by the U.S. government. I refer to NAVSTAR (NAVigation System with Time And Ranging; informally the “Navigation Star”)–a constellation of from 24 to 32 satellites orbiting the Earth, broadcasting data that allows users on or near the Earth to determine their spatial positions. The more general term in the United States for such an entity is “Global Positioning System” or “GPS.” The Russians have such a navigation system as well, which they call GLONASS (GLObal NAvigation Satellite System). (One might reflect that, for some purposes, the cold war lasted just long enough.) A more general, recent acronym for such systems is GNSS, standing for Global Navigation Satellite Systems. In the western world, GPS usually implies NAVSTAR, so I will use the two designations interchangeably in this text.

With GPS, the earth’s surface becomes the digitizer board; the electronic tracker antenna becomes the puck. This approach inverts the entire traditional process of GIS data collection: spatial data come directly from the environment and the map becomes a document of output rather than input. At sea, or flying over unlit bodies of land at night, captains and pilots used methods that provided absolute coordinates. One’s position, within a few miles, can be found by “shooting the stars” for a short time with devices such as sextants or octants. 

personal vehicle tracking devices , then, gives people an easy method for both assigning and using absolute coordinates. Now, humans can know their positions (i.e., the coordinates that specify where they are); combined with map and/or GIS data they can know their locations (i.e., where they are with respect to objects around them). So the GPS concept–finding an earthly position from bodies in space–is not an entirely new idea. But the ability to do so during the day, almost regardless of weather, with high accuracy and almost instantaneously, makes a major qualitative difference. As a parallel, consider that a human can move by foot or by jet plane. They are both methods of locomotion, but there the similarity ends.