![]() The advent of Google’s Geo Tools began in 2005 with Maps and Earth, followed by Street View in 2007. ![]() Meanwhile, the artist’s puckish stunt, which he describes as a “performance and installation,” seems anchored by sincere philosophical questions, as evidenced by the inclusion on his website of the below excerpt from “ The Power of Virtual Maps,” urban researcher Moritz Ahlert’s recent essay in the Hamburger Journal für Kulturanthropologie, : We appreciate seeing creative uses of Google Maps like this as it helps us make maps work better over time.” The spokesperson who engaged with Schoon put a good-natured face on Google’s response to Wickert’s hack, saying, “We’ve launched the ability to distinguish between cars and motorcycles in several countries including India, Indonesia and Egypt, though we haven’t quite cracked traveling by wagon. Wickert also discovered that his virtual traffic jam disappeared whenever a car passed his wagonload. Obviously, a couple of buses could easily be responsible for carrying 99 smartphones in active use, but it’s unlikely those phones owners would be consulting the map app in the passenger seats, when they could be scrolling through Instagram or playing Candy Crush. In other words, had you checked your phone before heading out to the Baumhaus an der Mauer(Treehouse on the Wall), the Urban Art Clash Gallery, OMA’s Café, or some other spot close to Wickert’s little red wagon’s trail of terror-like Google’s Berlin office-you might have thought twice about your intended path, or even going at all, seeing bridges and streets change from a free and easy green to an ostensibly gridlocked red.Īs long as Wickert kept moving, he was able to continue fooling the algorithm into thinking 99 humans were all using their phone’s Maps app for navigational purposes in a small, congested area. Traffic data in Google Maps is refreshed continuously thanks to information from a variety of sources, including aggregated anonymized data from people who have location services turned on and contributions from the Google Maps community. A near-instantaneous “virtual traffic jam” on Google Maps, even though bicyclists seem to vastly outnumber motorists along Wickert’s route.Īs a Google spokesperson told 9to5 Google’s Ben Schoon shortly after news of Wickert’s stunt began to spread:
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