Michael Goodchild is one scary dude.
Actually, he's not scary-looking. Or even a dude. He looks sort of like a grandfatherly college professor, which is good because he is a grandfather and a college professor.
Goodchild is professor of geography at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and one of the pre-eminent scholars in the world on geographic information and analysis.
In a talk last week at Ventura College, Goodchild laid out where we are today with Global Positioning Systems and their various stepchildren. And that is what's scary.
GPS, which was developed and is still operated by the U.S. military, is this cool little toy that many have in their cars, telling them when to turn left to get to that new Italian restaurant. The more devoted use GPS for outdoor adventures like geocaching where you find items hidden somewhere in the world, based on their longitude and latitude.
GPS is a system that basically allows you to know where you are anywhere in the world within one meter (that's like 39 inches and change). There are 24 satellites in fixed orbit, and your individual GPS device bounces a signal off at least three of them to figure out exactly where you are.
Exactly is the key. As Goodchild reminded us, this technology allows humanity to satisfy its "need to find itself."
But GPS is a little more than finding your way home after a night on the town. Researchers are capitalizing on the growth of the number of vehicles with GPS to be able to track and chart traffic congestion, knowing exactly when and where vehicles slow down.
It's also, as Goodchild said, the cheapest and most accurate way to create a map. And it allows all of us to create those maps. At openstreetmap.org, for instance, people from around the world are using GPS devices to make a global street map, one block at a time.
But GPS and some of its cohorts, like radio frequency identification (RFID) scans and smart dust, raise some fascinating — and troubling — questions about privacy.
Privacy is something we deal with extensively in the news media. There is an intersection between news and privacy, an ever-changing alignment of priorities and interests. We push for openness, particularly when it comes to public records and public information, while we are wary of crossing the line to intrude on the private citizen.
And private citizens push to gain greater degrees of privacy for themselves while spending billions of dollars to buy photos and stories about celebrities, provided by paparazzi who hunt the stars day and night.
There are no simple solutions. And technology is not making it any easier.
It's getting easier month by month to know where you are, all the time. Each time you use a credit card, you leave a mark that you were there. Each time you talk on a cell phone, you leave a trail that you were there. And now, thanks to those ever-present cell phones that can be equipped with GPS devices, we can track you to within a meter of where you are. Anytime. Anywhere.
And it's not only you. Companies are attaching RFID transmitters to their products as inventory control. But the little transmitters stay on the can of corn when you take it home and put it in your cupboard, telling everyone who wants to know that it's sitting there right behind the tomato soup, directly above the toaster in your kitchen.
And the latest technology consists of sensor networks, which are made up of tiny — as in microscopic — sensors that can be strewn like handfuls of dust and activated to send back information. Goodchild explained it could be scattered over the California hillsides to transmit a change in temperature so officials would be able to determine precisely the location of wildfires.
But the smart dust could be scattered elsewhere, with uses that are limited only by the imagination.
Like all other technological advances, this will probably prove to be a good thing. Goodchild called GPS "one of the most significant U.S. contributions to human welfare."
I think he's right. But I also know that someday, I may answer the knock on the door to find the kid from Vons with a quart of milk in hand because the one in my refrigerator reported it was out of date, ordered a new one, paid for it and directed the deliveryman to my house.
— John T. Moore is managing editor of The Star. He can be reached by phone at 437-0201 or by e-mail at jmoore@VenturaCountyStar.com.