沒(méi)有GPS，我們會(huì)迷路嗎？

沒(méi)有GPS，我們會(huì)迷路嗎？

關(guān)于現(xiàn)代網(wǎng)絡(luò)世界真正可怕的一點(diǎn)在于，如今一切都不是真正堅(jiān)不可摧的。

測(cè)試中可能遇到的詞匯和知識(shí)：

tentacles 觸手['t?nt?klz]

squadron 分遣隊(duì)；小艦隊(duì)['skw?dr?n]

tale 傳說(shuō)；敘述；流言蜚語(yǔ)[te?l]

roam 漫步；流浪[r??m]

Gulf war 海灣戰(zhàn)爭(zhēng) veer|轉(zhuǎn)向；改變觀點(diǎn)[v??] 海灣戰(zhàn)爭(zhēng)|經(jīng)聯(lián)合國(guó)批準(zhǔn)的將伊拉克軍隊(duì)驅(qū)逐出科威特的戰(zhàn)爭(zhēng)，1991年1至2月

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4分32秒 母語(yǔ)為英語(yǔ)者的朗讀速度 140

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We’d be lost without GPS（633 words）

By Gillian Tett

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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. 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.”

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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. 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.

請(qǐng)根據(jù)你所讀到的文章內(nèi)容，完成以下自測(cè)題目：

1. Where is the application area of GPS initially?

A. military

B. agriculture

C. hospital operations

D. financial trades

2. What was at the centre of the solar system from the ancient Greeks onwards?

A. the moon

B. the sun

C. the earth

D. the air

3. How many satellites at least to pinpoint our position?

A. 3

B. 4

C. 10

D. 30

4. What will appear to change when people rely on GPS to navigate?

A. cognitive sense

B. language competence

C. brains

D. concentration

[1] 答案 A. military

解釋：GPS（系統(tǒng)）最初是美國(guó)的一個(gè)軍事應(yīng)用。

[2] 答案 B. the sun

解釋：從古希臘起，很多文化認(rèn)為，太陽(yáng)圍繞地球轉(zhuǎn)動(dòng)。

[3] 答案 B. 4

解釋：GPS利用4枚或更多的衛(wèi)星來(lái)定位。

[4] 答案 C. brains

解釋：研究表明，當(dāng)人們依賴GPS導(dǎo)航時(shí)，他們停止在認(rèn)知層面與自己的周圍環(huán)境互動(dòng)，他們的大腦似乎會(huì)發(fā)生變化。