People, places, technology, and such

I was checking some locations on the Indian Yahoo Maps web site, and I realized that they have implemented landmark based directions.

For those that have never visited India, the concept may need some explanation: in Indian cities street names are almost useless: only some of the main roads have recognizable names, and even in those cases there are no signs displaying those names. Smaller streets do not have names, or if they have them, usually add to the confusion (there are whole neighborhoods full of numbered main and cross streets that do not seem to follow any predetermined pattern). If you add the fact that building numbers are almost inexistent, it is almost impossible to find a place only with the street name and number.

The solution is a landmark based address system. Basically, when you give somebody directions on how to get to some place, they are based on a series of landmarks, usually well known building, such as temples, official buildings, shopping centers, or any other specific street features that stand out. Any address is useless unless it includes the corresponding set of landmarks.

The consequence is that the mapping and directions applications that had been developed with the more regular American or European street systems in mind were useless for Indian cities, and they had to adapt to the specifics of Indian street systems and support landmarks. Yahoo Maps implementation is not perfect: it provides landmarks when giving directions from one place to another, but it does not allow you to include a landmark in an address (at least it has not worked for me…); but, with all its limitations, it is a step forward to adapt mapping and GIS systems to local needs

On one side, this is a clear example on how technological solutions have to adapt to local specific conditions, but this development also opens questions about the influence of technology on habits and attitudes: as GPS navigation, mapping software, and related technologies become more popular in countries such as India, will hey change the way addresses and directions are given?, does the inclusion of certain landmarks in a system such as Yahoo Maps say something about the relevance of that specific building?, who determines that a certain building and or site is a landmark?.

I can imagine, in the future, corporations, shopping malls, and other commercial sites paying for the inclusion of their corresponding locations as landmarks, and if that becomes a source of revenue for this type of services, is it possible that landmark based systems are also implemented in mapping services for other places?, and would that change the way we think and model our cities?…

I read yesterday, in the Spanish paper El País, an interview with Manuel Castells. The motivation for the interview is the publication of the Spanish translation of his latest book: Mobile Communication and Society.

As usual, Castells’ comments are thought provoking. I have specially found interesting his position against what could be called technological futurology, that he summarizes in this phrase (translatedd from the Spanish original text): “In reality, what most people calls future is the present, what happens is that they do not know it”.

He shows his point describing how mobile technologies are changing the way the world gets access to communication and services. There has been a lot of talk in the past years about the digital divide and how most part of the world population does not have access to computers and, consequently, data networks and services. There have been lots of initiatives to reduce the digital divide, usually focused on providing some kind of access to computers to the ‘disconnected’ populations (internet kiosks, internet community centers, OLPC…), but what is really giving the possibility to access on-line services to many groups that would, otherwise, remain disconnected are mobile technologies: more than half of the world’s population today has access to a mobile phone.

This concept of future is, precisely, what I want to refer to in the title of the blog. It is not about forecasting what is going to happen, and what the world is going to look like ten years from now. Lots of people have tried to do that with very little success. The possibilities of getting it wrong are much, much higher than guessing what is going to happen, so lets leave predictions to astrologers, chiromantics….

For me, taking about future is talking about what is happening today that is changing the way we do things, communicate, work, live…. Future is the path, not the destination, and when you want to follow a path that you do not know, you need to focus on the curves and slopes, the little changes, rather than trying to figure out what the destination is going to look like.