How We Found Ourselves

Get out your smartphone, and you can almost instantaneously know where you are — and find out how to get where you want to go. Which, when you think back on the history of human navigation is...pretty astounding. How did we come to hold such immense power in our hands? It’s all thanks to GPS, a technology born from the Cold War and the Space Race, and delivered into our personal pocket computers thanks to a series of dramatic, sometimes tragic events, and at least one war. Our guide is Paul Ceruzzi, a former curator at the Smithsonian and author of the book GPS. And Jordan Frith, a professor at Clemson University, talks about it means now that, for better or worse, we never have to get lost ever again.