Technology and its limits

December 22, 2009

By Utkarsh

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Yesterday for the first time I was roaming alone in Mumbai. Had to meet a friend in Andheri and I was staying in Airoli sector 6. I was not sure which bus goes where and thus all was to be asked from friends and fellow travellers.

The starting bus was told to me by my friend. Just to make sure that I was going where I wanted to go I tried to map the route on my E63. The connectivity was not an issue where ever I went.

The bus took me from Airoli sector 6 to SEEPZ in 20 minutes in 30 bucks that too in AC. (yea its true). I got down at SEEPZ. So far so good. Had my friend sms me her office address. Looked up the building name in map search and there it was on the map. I decided to walk upto her office. I reached there and waited for her to come. Did I tell you that all this while I was chatting to 3 of my friends who were on Gtalk and Facebook via Nimbuzz. I also Tweeted some bytes via Snaptu and updated my Facebook status through it too.

So far so good.

Now what bothered me was the resolution of my location shown to me on my phone which is within 500 to 700 meters depending upon the triangulation and terrain. We decided to go to Dominos and I assured them that we can reach on our own and lets try. At most we would have to ask some one.

Searched for Dominos on map located a store and as it was not that close we decide to get an auto rickshaw. The map showed me that we were going off route so we took a U turn… may be the driver was taking us on the right road… but who knows. We got down at a place somewhere near dominoes. In between Google failed to triangulate my location and ended up showing me somewhere in the mountains.

We looked for Dominos and following the map we reached the place marked dominoes. Now I don’t know whether it was the resolution issue or some bugger had marked dominoes on the wrong place. I guess the probability of it being marked wrongly on map is more. We had to ask a cool guy on a bus stop who told us the way to Dominos which was almost a kilo meter away from the marked spot. I also had called up the same outlet twice to confirm the location on the number that I got on the map. [number was correct spot was wrong or may be it was the triangulation algorithm... we would not be able to know]. Finally we reached Dominos. Had hell of a party. India had won the match too…

Lesson learn: Trust the technology but it has its limits and asking a human doest hurt at all (if confused ask more then one)

Technology can be trusted but people can not as we see that the person who marked Dominos on map was surely a human.

I know both statements above contradict but so is life… contradictory and confusing…

BTW I love my E63

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