Daniel Pund
Nowhere Man
When you don’t know where you’re going but you know where you
need to be, you can get by with a little help from Dan’s Friend.
I had a friend. For the purposes of this column,
let’s call him Dan’s Friend. Or, if you’re my
mother, you may call him Daniel’s Friend. Any way,
Dan’s Friend was the only otherwise normally func-
tioning person I’ve ever met who appeared to arrive
at a time and place without knowledge of how he’d
gotten to that time and place. It was as if his inter-
nal script just periodically rebooted, and he would
start fresh wherever he happened to be. I always
wondered what was going on in his head in those
moments. Flashing lights and circus music, maybe?
Whatever. It didn’t seem to bother him.
6aRYYf\baUVORPNbR6ORYVRcR6¼[NYYfX[\dU\d
he felt in those moments. But in my case, the cogni-
tive dissonance is the fault of Google.
F\b RR 6 NZ N UNOVabNY DNgR bR_ AUR a_N¦P
monitoring, cop-spotting navigation app owned
by Google is now a consistent, data-sucking part
of my daily existence, an existence that features a
minimum of 100 miles of driving each day. Waze is
N T\QR[Q \[ Zf a_N¦PPY\TTRQ P\]Q\aaRQ P\Z- mute. With the proliferation of laser and instant-on radar, Waze can warn you about speed traps a detec- tor might not register until you’re getting a ticket. Yes, that feature relies on fellow users being diligent NO\ba ½NTTV[T P\] /ba 6 YVXR Va±[Nf 6μcR T_\d[
dependent on it. For expediency, I allow it to track
me in almost all my vehicular moves, guiding me to
places both familiar and not.
I now don’t know where I’m going, but I always end up in the
right place. Thanks to its excellent search function, I usually
don’t even need to know an address. I need only an approxima-
tion of the place’s name. And when I arrive, by whatever novel
route Waze has decided for me, I can’t help but feel slightly lost.
I inherited my brain from my bog-dwelling ancestors. Left
to its own devices, that brain would direct me to follow the well-
worn and familiar paths. If it turns out that there happens to be
a bear on that path, well, then I guess I’ll encounter a bear.
But Waze doesn’t think like a human brain. I have had the
same 5 0 -mile work commute for more than a decade. During
the vast majority of that time, I followed the same route encom-
]N``V[T ¼cR Re]_R``dNf` N[Q N SRd `b_SNPR `a_RRa` dVaU \[Yf
minor variations because of construction closures or whatnot.
But in the last couple years, I have taken, well, I have no idea how
ZN[fQVßR_R[a_\baR`6μcRaNXR[6Y\`aP\b[aNSaR_ 6P\bYQ[μa
retrace most of them if my life depended on it. How could an
R¦PVR[a_\baRa\.[[._O\_V[PYbQRNQRa\b_aU_\bTUN1Ra_\Va
neighborhood so abandoned that it’s in the process of being
reclaimed by nature? But I end up at work. And I arrive there in
what I assume is about the same amount of time my tried-and-
true route would have taken.
I was once convinced that my mind and Waze’s algorithms
were beginning to grow together like a tree planted too close
to a fence so that, as it grows, it surrounds parts of the chain-
YV[XV[ObYO\b`a_RR½R`U6T\aZfURNQN_\b[QaURVQRNaUNaa\
work smoothly with Waze, I should begin to think of the direc-
tions for an upcoming expressway interchange not as “take I-7 5
south,” but rather as two steps: “Take I-7 5 north and south then
XRR]YRSaS\_6$"`\baU³6¼Tb_RQaUNaaUR
tree and the fence were stronger together
than apart. But now I’m thinking that per-
haps the tree isn’t growing much anymore.
That there is only fence.
I used to while away my time on long
drives doing time-speed-distance calcula-
tions to monitor my progress and exercise
my melon. Now I think of writing columns
about how I have outsourced those mental
calisthenics. Further, I’ve grown distrust-
ful of the algorithm’s motives. Is it sending
me on this absurd path to get me to my des-
aV[NaV\[V[aURZ\`aR¦PVR[adNf\_V`VaWb`a
b`V[TZRa\TNaUR_a_N¦PQNaN,
I think I’d like to gather my own data for
my own purposes again. One thing: Could
you guys send me real-time reports of speed
traps on my route? Every day. Thanks.“I was once convinced
that my mind and
Waze’s algorithms were
beginning to grow to-
gether like a tree planted
too close to a fence.”
22 DECEMBER 2019 ~ CAR AND DRIVER
ILLUSTRATIONBY^ BRETTAFFRUNTI