Status: 04.02.2020 02:20 a.m..
Simon Weckert moves through the streets of Berlin with a handcart. He has 99 used smartphones in his luggage – he wants to fool Google Maps into a traffic jam.
Google Maps has become indispensable for many. The Berlin artist Simon Weckert knows that too – and has turned it into an art project. Weckert was on the streets of Berlin with a handcart. He had 99 used smartphones with him, which, according to Weckert, Google Maps interpreted as a column of 99 cars.
The result: the app reported a traffic jam that actually wasn’t.
With the 99 smartphones in the handcart, Wencker fakes the app into a traffic jam.
Influence of Google Maps on society.
Weckert says he wants the campaign to show how digital services affect our lives. Because Google Maps accesses user data that flows into the traffic jam map.
“The action makes it possible to turn a green street into a red one,” Weckert wrote in a tweet. This has a direct impact on our everyday life because drivers are navigated to other routes.
Weckert has published a video of his tour on YouTube. In it you can see how the map changes as he walks down the street. Gradually, the color of the road in the app changes from green to red.
And Weckert has the desired virtual traffic jam.
99 cell phones based on the Occupy movement.
The equipment used in the event looks simple, at least the handcart. It took him a while to get 99 functioning smartphones, says Weckert. Friends had sponsored some of it: “For them it was just electronic waste.”
The artist had to organize the rest of the work. He chose the number 99 based on the Occupy movement. They made headlines in http://news-today.fun/a-couple-of-questions-about-the-launchpad/ 2011 when tens of thousands of people took to the streets against the power of the financial markets – they described themselves as the “movement of the 99 percent” who are excluded from economic and political power.
The idea arose during the May 1st demo.
“The idea came to me at a demo on May 1st,” Weckert told tagesschau.de. “There were a lot of people on the street and when I looked in the app, everything was red.” So he made the decision to test Google Maps – but only on roads with little traffic. As soon as cars drive past it, the alleged traffic jam in the app is lifted.
On his homepage he quotes the Berlin urban researcher Moritz Ahlert. In his doctoral thesis, he dealt with the influence of Google Maps on urban areas. The Google Maps app – as Ahlert also writes – is just one example for many: because apartment platforms, car sharing offers or dating apps would also change our lives.
Editor’s note: Network expert Marcel Weiß points out on his website that it is not possible to use this method to simulate a traffic jam on a busy road in Google Maps. Even a single car, the driver of which uses Google Maps and which drives at regular speed, lets the algorithm recognize the dizziness. Weckert has now admitted this to several media.
He had specifically chosen streets that were already little used for the campaign.
Inforadio reported on this topic on February 4, 2020 at 6:52 a.m..
