GPS Chatter

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I wonder if Matilda talks to The Bitch.  Matilda, as you may recall, is my GPS.  I have a friend who calls hers “The Bitch,” as in “You better listen to the bitch, she knows how to get there.”  As I drove into work this morning I fell to wondering about what Matilda is doing when she is not telling me “In point five miles take the ramp to I-540 East. Then stay right.”  Sometimes I wonder if she is talking to The Bitch:

Matilda:  “I mean if he is just going to turn whenever he wants why turn me on to begin with?”

The Bitch: “Tell me about it.  Yesterday my human said she wanted to go to the mall and then just drove to the grocery store.  I’m squawking my head off, and she just cranks up the radio! Geez, what a bitch!”

Another image reveals a bunch of folks who didn’t quite make the cut to be air-traffic controllers sitting in a room full of monitors.  Each one has a couple of dozen little cars running around on their screens.  If they click on a car a script pops up: “British Female Voice: In point five miles take the ramp to I-540 East. Then stay right.” They read the script, with appropriate accent, into a microphone.  And there is a big red button right by their mouse that says “Recalculating.”  They keep hitting it, over and over and over.

I know it doesn’t work that way – what bothers me is that I really have no idea how it does work.  When Matilda says “Acquiring Satellite” is she, like, watching me?  How does she know when I turn off her desired path?  And when she always tells me to turn the wrong way on E. Durham Road?  What’s going on there? Coffee break?  Potty call? Talking to The Bitch?

I probably don’t really want to know .  .  .  .
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You'll Come A'waltzing . . . .

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I think of her as Matilda, which is rather bizarre given that she has neither gender nor personhood.  I have never personally known a Matilda, other than the waltzing variety who also seems more imagined than real.  Matilda: a disembodied female voice. Maddeningly distant.  Perhaps it is the total lack of affect in her voice.  I have never heard her sound excited, nothing rattles her.  I can completely ignore her, countermand her every suggestion, and she never retaliates.  She pauses for a moment and then intones with frustrating placidity, “Recalculating.”

And still, I love her.  The cheapie USB A to USB A cable that powers the cooling pad for my laptop had died – meaning I can only run it for a half hour or so before I can fry eggs on it – push it much longer and it simply shuts down.  You’d think it would be an easy thing to replace – but no, nobody carries them.  Not Staples, not Best Buy, not Radio Shack – nobody except a funky little computer shop called Connect-IT up in some corner of the city I never frequent.  I gave Matilda the address and off we went – “going 1.3 miles and turning right on Chapel Hill Road.”  35 minutes of dispassionate dialogue later there I was – “arriving at Connect-IT on the left.”  I admit it – I need her.  Which is, of course, why my wife bought her for me this Christmas.

Still, I wonder about the place of the GPS in the contemporary technology negotiation.  Matilda can be as capricious as any woman I have ever known.  As I drive into to work she instructs, “In .5 miles stay left on E. Durham road” despite the fact that both her map and the road curve right.  “In .4 miles turn right on Western Avenue.” An obvious left.  Yet on the return trip her instructions are flawless.  What is it with that?  Shades of Hal in 2001 – “Turn left into on-coming traffic. Trust me Robert, it will be all right.”

Then as we approach campus she says, “In 2 miles turn right onto Avent Ferry Road.” This time the directions are correct but the pronunciation is wrong.  Everyone who lives here knows that the proper pronunciation is “A”-vent, as in A, B, C. But Matilda says “Aw-vent” as in “Aw-shucks.” “Turn right onto Aw-vent Ferry Road.” If I were to return to Raleigh in 20 years, I wonder if I would discover that all the freshman were telling their friends back home that they live on Aw-vent Ferry Road - because that is how the GPS on their smart phones pronounced it.

The idea is that the more ubiquitous the communication container, the more significant its potential to affect our communicative style – “gr8! on the right in .2 miles.”
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