Technology Archive

A number of attempts to create alternatives to the U.S. Global Positioning System are underway. Russia is close to completing its GLONASS system, which India plans to join, while China is working on developing its own system. In an email interview, Charles Vick, senior technical and policy analyst for GlobalSecurity.org, discussed global satellite navigation systems. WPR: What countries are currently pursuing a global navigation satellite system (GNSS) capability and what is the status of their programs? Charles Vick: The Global Positioning System (GPS), the global navigation system developed by the U.S., remains the primary system used by both the military […]

The wave of popular uprisings sweeping throughout the Middle East may give new life to what Evgeny Morozov, in his just-released book, “The Net Delusion,” called the “Google doctrine”: the “fervent conviction that given enough gadgets, connectivity and foreign funding, dictatorships are doomed.” Morozov initially dismissed that doctrine last August, when it appeared that the Iranian government had decisively broken that country’s Green Movement. But his assertion that new information technologies can just as easily be used in the service of strengthening authoritarian regimes as in toppling them is now being challenged by pundits citing the role of YouTube, Facebook […]