Foreword vii FACING PAGE Areas of the ocean that have frozen are considered sea ice, which can vary from slushy, barely solid areas to sheets of ice that are meters thick. Since the late 1970s, satellites have monitored the extent and concentration of sea ice around the world. This view shows Arctic sea-ice extents from 1979 to 2023. FOREWORD James Fallows Author and journalist The book you’re about to read is strikingly beautiful. It is also timely and significant. The Power of Where offers a unique inside view of a technology revolution that is just now coming to maturity. And it helps us see the dawn of new technologies with enormous potential to address urgent problems around the world. Scientific and technological achievements are often celebrated as dramatic, stand-alone events. The first radio transmission. The first steps on the moon. The first model of the human genome. But nearly all progress that matters has been decades or even centuries in its gradual evolution and is built on the work of innumerable people in varied roles. It has drawn from individual visionaries, large organized teams, and collaborations across continents. It has involved universities, businesses, national governments, and people who found exactly the breakthrough they were looking for—and others whose most important discoveries happened almost by chance. Isaac Newton famously said that if he could see farther than others, it was because he “stood on the shoulders of giants.” Today’s innovators, including those whose work appears in this book, stand on the shoulders of Newton and countless others between our time and his. And they do so in a more profoundly connected way than even Newton could have envisioned. Progress in one branch of science or technology now speeds progress in all others. Ever-increasing computing speed does for us what the wheel, the printing press, and the use of electricity did for our ancestors. It makes more things possible, all at once. Ever-faster and stronger digital networks allow people to know instantly what is happening in their community, or on the other side of Earth. Ever-more accurate sensors allow us to see, hear, and measure what is happening at the atomic level or in the vastness of space. Ever-more sophisticated analytic tools give us a sharper picture of what will happen next. The Power of Where meets the dual challenges of explaining how far technology has brought us and outlining the new opportunities it will open. As its eight chapters and many interactive maps make clear, these opportunites all arise from the deep human sense of place and from the mutually reinforcing revolutions in sensing, analyzing, predicting, and communicating that today’s geographic information systems (GIS) make possible. This is a cautionary book. The more vividly we can see and assess the state of the world’s climates, forests, waters, wildlife, and human settlements, the more acutely we realize the dangers to them all. But the same GIS tools that serve as stark warning signals also show us how—and where—we can best act to turn an ominous tide. Technology offers the tools, but success depends on all of us sharing our knowledge, working together, and considering the best alternatives. We stand on the shoulders of giants with these new ways to see where we are now and where we are going. The essays, analyses, and maps in this book give us an even clearer view.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MjA2NTE0Mw==