I hope everyone enjoyed the Thanksgiving holiday, and shopped to their Black Friday/Cyber Monday satisfaction (ranging from “total abstention” to “shopped your brains out.”)
I left the ancestral home on Saturday night to try to beat traffic. It’s pretty much a straight shot down I-95, and normally the drive from the NJ suburbs to the VA suburbs isn’t too bad. Even when post-Thanksgiving traffic gets bad, it’s bad in fairly predictable spots — there are a few choke points on the NJ Turnpike, the Delaware Memorial Bridge, and pretty much the entire state of Delaware.
It’s so straightforward, and I’ve done it so many times over the years, that I usually don’t even bother to mount my GPS — it just seems so unnecessary.
Except this year, there was an accident that shut down the southern part of the NJ Turnpike. Even worse, it had backed traffic up way past the usual detour (Exit 7A, 195 to Trenton, followed by 295 down — it’s a nice drive, and the Turnpike Authority’s default alternate).
I was left with a crucial decision: Work my way through what turned out to be a 20-mile backup, or bail at the last available (and unfamiliar) exit before the mess and try to find my way over from there.
I clawed through the glove compartment to mount my GPS, but it was still searching for satellites by the time I reached the decision point. So I made a leap of faith, hit the exit, and just tried to head south and west through small towns until I could get back on the proper interstate.
The Slippery Slope to Dependence Starts With “Always on”
With the GPS finally up and running, I eventually found my way, and the episode answered a question that I’d been mulling over for a while: Why do people feel the need to be plugged in to their GPS units, even when they’re driving familiar routes? And the answer is, “So that it’s available in case something unfamiliar comes up.” Even the fastest device has to power on and boot up, which takes time — time you don’t have to spend if it’s already on.
This, incidentally, was one of the main reasons why broadband access changed people’s use of the Internet so dramatically — it wasn’t just that high-speed pipe lets you transmit more data — it’s that broadband is always on. There’s no waiting for modems to dial and connections to be made — it’s just there. And when something’s there, you find new ways to use it, and it just becomes part of what you do, and then suddenly, one day, you find that you can’t do without it.
In that way, we see how ubiquity turns novelties into conveniences, which become utilities, which then turn into necessities. (It’s sneaky that way.)
The other thing I noted is that, at least in the general media, people key on “geospecific” this and that when it comes to mobile functionality and the visualization of data, though they almost always mean “geo-temporally specific.” I’m sure there’s a commonly-accepted term to describe what I’m fumbling for, which is to say that location-based information needs to be near you in both space and time: A traffic data visualization that shows you last year’s/month’s/week’s/hour’s traffic isn’t useful to you now.
Blindingly obvious, I guess, but I think it makes sense to take a look at assumptions every now and again. Or I guess I just had some time to fill and kill during the rest of the drive (which was uneventful).
Got a thought to share about the insidious, inexorable march of technology? Leave a comment below.
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