Recalculating

Many, many moons ago, in the days when phones were still stupid, I had a job that required me to travel a lot by car. Even though I have a solid sense of direction, I often found myself traveling down the wrong road. My family thinks that I’m just ditsy, but I attribute it to pure wanderlust. Whatever the reason, it is problematic to be hours late for a meeting because you headed for Duluth instead of St. Cloud. I’m not sure why everyone made such a fuss. They’re both in Minnesota after all.

At some point, my wife took matters into her own hands and purchased a Garmin GPS system for my birthday. That wonderful gift became my constant companion for a number of years. We called the little system Marge, for “Marge in Charge.” The lovely female voice on the Garmin did direct me everywhere I went. “Turn left, then turn left.” Marge would call out in her dulcet tones. As confusing as such instructions were, Marge was always correct. As an interesting aside, we have a close family friend named Marge. Although she never openly took offense at our name for our GPS, when she purchased a GPS it was named “Tom Tom.” I got the point.

By far, Marge’s (the GPS) most annoying trait was her abrasive habit of  “recalculating!” Translated into English this actually means, “You dumb schmuck, you missed the turn!” I know because I heard it often. At first, I would take Marge at face value and wait for her to find a different route as I continued on. This is where Marge’s sadistic personality rose to the surface. Marge always recalculated to the most rutted, pot-holed, and torturous route possible to punish me for missing the turn she’d clearly instructed me to take. After a while, I learned that when I heard her say, “recalculating,” I stopped, turned around, and went back to the turn she had originally chosen. It proved to be worth the effort.

As amazing as she was, Marge had her flaws. There was a time or two when following her prescribed route, I found the end of a road that went nowhere. Then I had the joy of driving around with her loudly “recalculating” until she found a path that actually went through to where we were headed. Another flaw turned up in construction zones. Marge absolutely hated detours. She would go into a recalculating loop at the top of her virtual lungs for the entire time we were routed around the construction. It could be maddening, and usually resulted in Marge getting herself shut down.

To be perfectly honest, Marge’s flaws were not entirely her fault. The old Garmins required a map update process that involved hooking them up to computers and downloading some new data. I actually tried to do this a couple of times without success. Without the updates, Marge’s inaccuracies increased over time.

Then phones grew to adulthood. Map applications on phones became more and more capable. At first, for me, they were only supplements to cover Marge’s foibles. But, after a while they completely replaced her, leaving her pining away in the glove compartment.

Smartphone map apps have really come into their own. Now there is hardly a legitimate address in America that I can’t get to. Best of all, most of the apps automatically update their data all on their own. My favorite one displays the posted speed limit and tells me which lane to get into for an upcoming turn. It’s fabulous. Now if they could only just drive the car! I’m told that they are working on that.

However, not everything is good about the continuous advance toward higher IQ in AI. Smarter phones are not necessarily better with a plain old human still driving the car. Let me illustrate what I mean. One of the recent improvements in map apps is the ability to read real-time traffic data. I actually find it helpful when my favorite app marks stretches of the upcoming route with yellow for slowed traffic and red for stopped cars. When you’re driving on an eight-lane wide freeway through Atlanta, it is good information to know. 

But I have one smarty pants app that thinks it can get me through traffic jams by directing me to a side route where I can bypass the freeway parking lot.  I don’t doubt it has good intentions, but it needs to supply only me with this valuable information. Instead, it blabs the same alternate route to everyone else in the vicinity. So when I cleverly slide out of traffic down the ramp toward my secret side route, I’m joined by every Tom, Dick, and Harry with the same app on their stupid phone. We instantly form a lemming train on streets that were never designed to handle that volume of traffic. Later, when we finally sort out the gridlock on the end-run route, we rejoin a freeway that has been totally clear of its traffic jam for hours.

Another issue with the increasing intelligence of map apps is what computers consider the shortest route. In America, we have a lovely history of incredibly detailed cartography. The United States Geological Survey literally mapped every cow path and deer trail in the country, not just once, but repeatedly, over the last century. Together with the advent of Google Earth, you can practically watch the corn grow in Kansas from a computer in Georgia. With all this detail folded into a smartphone app, the shortest route can sometimes turn into a nightmare. It is not uncommon to find yourself dodging soccer balls as you take hairpin turns through a suburban neighborhood. Or, you may find yourself thinking about building a campfire in your trunk to keep the wolves at bay as you ease down a lonely wilderness track where the most recent traffic was pulled by horses. And, it is all done in the name of the shortest route. Maybe when we put our phones in charge of driving the car, they’ll figure this out. Then again, you can still buy USGS maps on paper.

All in all, GPS applications are one of the greatest developments of the modern age. Have you noticed that just supplying your address is enough for guiding a visiting friend to your home? Gone are the days of typing out detailed step-by-step instructions. For this nomad, GPS apps are a true Godsend. While traveling around the country, it’s nice. Actually getting places is even better. I just did a quick count of the apps on my phone using GPS to direct me around the planet.  I am loath to admit that the number is greater than a dozen. It appears that my phone will be telling me where to go for the rest of my life. I just hope it learns to drive before they take away my keys.