Yahoo News Inventor of GPS says ‘world has lost art of map-reading’
An engineer behind the GPS satellite navigation system which powers billions of smartphones has said that his invention meant the world ‘lost the art of map-reading’.
Professor Bradford Parkinson received the Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering for his work on GPS in the 70s, along with a team of experts.
The Global Positioning System was initially developed as a military project, but came to power many popular smartphone apps such as Uber and Google Maps.
Powered by 30 satellites orbiting the Earth, the system allows anyone to know where they are to an accuracy of a few feet.
It’s still maintained by the American military, but used freely worldwide.
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Professor Parkinson said’Like all good things, GPS is something on which we can become too dependent.’
‘There are downsides; every advance has that, he said. The fact is that people don’t know how to read maps anymore. I love maps.’
Professor Parkinson said that it was crucial to develop ‘back-up’ technologies so people can have accurate location data if GPS fails.
