Precision Targets: GPS and the Militarization of Everyday Life

Precision Targets: GPS and the Militarization of Everyday Life is a collaborative multi-media piece created by Caren Kaplan, Erik Loyer, and Ezra Clayton Daniels. Through a series of vignettes, it explores the ways that dual use technologies like GPS are used in military and civilian spheres and how these technologies increasingly blur the distinction between these spheres. As she argues:

• the circulation of GPS between military and civilian use is instructive if we want to understand better the ways in which government and business cooperate not only to make war but to create consumers. Most importantly, in this way, people who have no particular interest in military projects or nationalism may find themselves through their use of technology in everyday life participating in the culture of war: through ways of seeing, forms of entertainment, and modes of communication.

The argument is provocative and compelling. And what I particularly like is that Kaplan is able to demonstrate a nuance put forward by David Campbell and Michael J. Shapiro more broadly with respect to visual cultures. That is, rather than getting stuck in an 'either-or' understanding of technologies like GPS, it is important to understand how they underpin contemporary military practices while potentially offering a means of critically engaging with them.

Moreover, the format is engaging and accessible to an extent that traditional methods of presenting arguments are not. Thus,  Precision Targets is also a catalyst for people like myself to think about how we go about presenting our research and the sorts of platforms that might convey our messages better than traditional publishing outlets.