Technology Gone Wild — GPS

No doubt you have seen some technologies, products or how people are using them that made you wonder: what were they thinking?. Well, technology gone wild is about those cases where the technology and resulting products do more harm than good, and where the cost is greater than benefits.

• technology is clearly misused, misinterpreted or misapplied either by people or technology/product itself;
• technology has unintentional side effects, usually due to poor implementation;
• technology is used where it shouldn’t be used at all, basically an overkill;

TechDirt recently had a post: When In Doubt, Blame It On Technology. Apparently, in UK people are blindly following GPS directions, even if it leads them off the cliffs, or in some cases “right into the path of a speeding train”. Maybe it is time to rephrase the saying to would you jump off the bridge if your GPS told you?. Turns out authorities are starting put up “ignore your sat nav” signs at places, but how about adding a warning to GPS unit that repeats every 5 mins “use caution and common sense following directions”.

About the Google map directions mentioned in the comments section, it really does instruct to swim across the ocean: Swim across the Atlantic Ocean 3,462 mi

Frankly, I like GPS technology and Google maps, and rely on them heavily when traveling. However, I also recognize the imperfections of the technology, like with Spring being the season of sprouting road construction work all around the City. At the same time, we need to build technologies for the lowest common denominator of our target users. So, how do you build automatic problem prevention in to your system? How about in the case of GPS, provide warning signals to mark railroad crossings, cliffs, or map areas of high uncertainty, and incorporate latest road conditions in regular map updates. Either way, thinking about our lowest common denominator target user will surely lead to development of better products.

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