A Berlin-based artist outwitted Google Maps into thinking there was a traffic jam by using a handcart filled with telephones.
Simon Weckert named his piece Google Maps Hacks and posted a video to YouTube on Monday, showing a person pulling a red wagon full of 99 Android smartphones by the main streets of Berlin, which included rolling previous the Google offices.
The phones — every with its personal SIM card and utilizing Google Maps during the experiment — pinged their location and motion again to Google servers, which then depicted the street as lighting up in red on the app, indicating visitors had slowed to a crawl.
“Through this exercise, it’s potential to show a green street red, which has an impact in the physical world by navigating cars on one other route to avoid being caught in traffic,” Weckert wrote in a statement.
Weckert aspired to show how we rely on data to predict our reality.
The event took place last summer, but the video was posted this week in honor of the 15th anniversary of Google Maps.