Jay's Expose

In a world where everything is connected, it will be interesting to see what is next. “The Internet of Things” is what it’s being called and we’re already more connected than you may even realize. Imagine a world where your fridge can tell you what foods are running low and need to be replenished, or where a salt shaker measures out the portion size so that you make sure you are getting the right amount of sodium with your meal! It shouldn’t take too much strain to your imagination to do so seeing as we live in this world today! Now we can turn on the A/C in our homes from work, find out where we parked our car in the lot at the end of the work day and see how long it will take us to get where we’re going in current traffic conditions. It sounds like some kind of cool futuristic world that I’m describing, but this is truly where we are already at as a society.

One thing that has extremely impacted me is the way that technology has changed the way I check up on traffic conditions in order to maximize my efficiency on my commute. Back in highschool, I had to travel around 30 miles to get to school. I was always heading out to school at time when the rest of the world was on their way to work so the traffic was dense- guaranteed. I will never forget the times when I would be getting ready and my mom would turn the news up and ask my brother and I to quiet down when the traffic came on. She had to hear the traffic report so that she knew the best route to take to avoid the ever present accidents on I-696. The news would show a video of a helicopter fly by of the accidents and they would guesstimate how long of a detour most commuters would experience. As I got older and began driving myself to school, I would never wake up early enough to watch the traffic report and luckily for me I didn’t have to. Google was doing it for me. When 6:30 would roll around, my phone would ping me a notification about how heavy or light traffic was if I went X route and that I would need to leave at a specific time in order to arrive on time. If I was running behind, I would open Maps and see where the accidents were on my way to school and think about various routes I could take to avoid the traffic. It was amazing how precise Google was about the traffic and its density. I would sometimes turn on Google Maps to see how long it would take me to get to school. I would have been late countless times if not for the assistance of Google in showing me where the traffic was so that I could avoid it. This isn’t what people probably typically use the app for- I assume it’s more of an assist in how to get where you’re going and less of how can you carve off every single second of the  commute- even though it functions as so as well. As I continued to enjoy the convenience of the app, I couldn’t help but wonder every once in a while how Google knew what the traffic was like before the drivers or the news.

How did Google know that an accident had occurred just moments after the incident? I later found out that it was because Google could compile their users’ location data in order to see how fast people are going and where to get an idea of the traffic conditions. This struck me as genius! No road sensors needed to be installed, no added infrastructure. The mobile devices that we all use work together to give us info that was used to make commuting easier. Things like this are emerging all over the world as technology is moving to make lives more convenient. This convenience isn’t free; it costs our privacy. A lot of people don’t realize the extent to which data is collected on them. But then again, convenience is convenient and ignorance is bliss.