It’s strange. We tend to trust technology for some reason. I have no idea why, since it tends to lead us astray in many different ways.
We have learned the hard way not to believe everything we read and see online. Too much of it isn’t true. A lot of times it is obviously false, but still people tend to want to believe it. We won’t trust other people, but we do seem to trust technology.
But there are ways to make technology lie to us. Artist Simon Weckert decided to prove how easy it was to create fake traffic jams on Google maps. So he got 99 cell phones and put them in a little red wagon. He then turned on Google maps on all the phones and started walking around his city. This created virtual traffic jams.
You can see how this could happen. As far as the app is concerned, there were 99 people all at the exact same place. Since the weren’t moving much, it looked like a traffic jam. He then discovered this could cause real traffic jams, because people would see a traffic holdup on their app and use alternate routes to try to avoid it.
Many of us have already learned not to put too much trust in traffic apps. In areas like this, it’s not uncommon to find yourself driving down a road that doesn’t exist, or sent down a road that may have at one time taken you to your intended destination, but just doesn’t go there anymore.
I used to like physical maps. There is just something artistic about them. Sure, no one could ever figure out how to fold one after it was unfolded, but there is beauty in a physical map.
But it just seems the more we put our faith in technology, the more effort people put into finding ways to make it not work right. I’ll just take my little red wagon full of phones and be on my way now.
