\t\t\t\tSomeone came by to visit a few weeks ago. Addresses and directions around here\u00a0can be confusing to\u00a0anyone unfamiliar with the area, so I’ve assumed\u00a0a habit of giving unusually detailed instructions for how to get here from the subway.<\/p>\n
It is not far at all but one wrong turn will send you on a \u00bd hour commute to and from nowhere you need to be.<\/p>\n
We were meeting to conduct an interview for an NPR radio show. I don’t like doing interviews. She knew this. Time was tight for both of us, and I am a crank when it comes to media spots.<\/p>\n
Planning\u00a0to be here at 4pm she called\u00a0around 4:20pm.<\/p>\n
Her voice sounding exasperated she explained that she had used the “Directions” product offered by a certain search engine. When she exited\u00a0the subway this product\u00a0sent her completely the wrong way. When she arrived here she was abjectly apologetic, saying “You wrote out such detailed directions but Google told me to go completely the opposite direction.”<\/p>\n
She ended up using my directions instead of Google’s.<\/p>\n
Why?<\/p>\n
Because when it comes to getting the 3 blocks from the subway to my apartment building I know what I\u00a0am talking about. I am not a\u00a0zombie robot with ads slapped on his forehead (oh, wait).<\/p>\n
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard people say that this happened to them. And yet these same people keep using the “Directions” product offered by this company.<\/p>\n
It has to be that it\u00a0works much of the time, maybe only some of the time, or maybe it never works at all and\u00a0people keep returning to it as some form of technology-infatuated self-flagellation.<\/p>\n
At a wedding a couple of\u00a0years ago 3 of the 6 couples at the table described getting hopelessly lost en route to the event. What did these couples have in common? They all used this company’s “Directions” product.<\/p>\n
2 of the couples said they got accurate directions from gas station employees. The other couple I don’t remember how they eventually found their way.<\/p>\n
The point being: If it’s a web\u00a0product that does not work, then that’s just the way it is. We\u00a0will use this non-functional product, we\u00a0will get lost, and we\u00a0will like it. We will come back for more bad directions the next time we assume that paper maps and simple planning are for luddites and losers.<\/p>\n
No communication channels exist between the big searchies\u00a0and you,\u00a0their\u00a0products\u00a0(that’s a nod to old meme that if you are not paying for\u00a0web content then you are the product being sold to advertisers). We are the Internet’s\u00a0product being sold.<\/p>\n
\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Someone came by to visit a few weeks ago. Addresses and directions around here\u00a0can be confusing to\u00a0anyone unfamiliar with the area, so I’ve assumed\u00a0a habit of giving unusually detailed instructions for how to get here from the subway. It is not far at all but one wrong turn will send you on a \u00bd hour […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[32],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-254","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-unrepentant","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paumAn-46","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=254"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=254"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=254"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=254"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}