Cartography comes of age with digital cellphone applications

Anybody who knows anything about Harry Potter has drooled over the Marauder’s Map ? a handy little tool that shows Harry, in real time, the location of every person at Hogwart’s School of Witchcraft and Wizardry (see below for details). Today, that fantastical map seems to be turning into reality: GPS applications on our cell phones, like Amigo Mapper, allow us to track our friends via their cell phones. But are there people, or companies, other than our friends who would be interested in knowing where we are? Yes, says John Markoff, technology reporter for the New York Times and author of an article on geographical cell phone technologies in today’s Science Times. He joins The Takeaway to talk about the implications around the rise of GPS technologies in handheld devices.