Google Maps Hacks by Simon Weckert - Simon Weckert

  • Virtual services have an impact on the physical world.
  • Simon Weckert wanted to demonstrate this by misleading Google Maps.
  • He also showed that mapping applications have limits.

Showing the impact of virtual services on the real world is what Simon Weckert wanted to do. Accompanied by 99 smartphones connected to Google Maps in a wagon, this artist wandered the streets of Berlin and created a virtual traffic jam. The service of the American giant has indeed considered the streets taken by the latter as difficult to access and has therefore redirected its users located in the vicinity on other routes. Google Maps performs its traffic calculations by tracking the number of users. "It is possible to make a green street red, which has an impact in the real world by directing cars on another route to avoid being trapped in a traffic jam," said Simon Weckert on his website.

The artist believes that Google Maps has changed the way we interact with maps, their technological limits and their aesthetic appearance and that virtual modifications are thus made to the "real city". The Google service is indeed used by several applications like Airbnb, Uber, Deliveroo or Tinder. According to Simon Weckert, this creates new forms of digital capitalism and commodification.

Divert the flow

Although the artist describes his experience as a "hack", a hack therefore, it is not one. However, this is not the first time that a false traffic jam has been declared on one of the Google applications. In 2014, two students from Technion, the Israel Institute of Technology, created a program, as part of a school project, which enabled them to generate false traffic jams on the Waze application. They only did it on one route from their campus, but their teacher said they could have created one on any road in Israel. They also informed the company in question. In any case, these virtual traffic jams are a good way to divert other vehicles and be quiet on the road as shown in the Simon Weckert video posted on YouTube.

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  • Car
  • Google maps
  • smartphone
  • Culture
  • congestion