1,000 People Are 'Driving' Across the US One Photo at a Time on Google Maps
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As you're reading this, nearly 1,000 people are traveling across the United States in the same car. It's not a real car, of course; it's Street View-based software called Internet Roadtrip, made by developer Neal Agarwal, and the road-trippers vote every couple of seconds to decide where they're headed off to next. The journey began in Boston, Massachusetts earlier this month, and there's absolutely no telling where it will go or when it will end.
The interface is refreshingly simple. Most of the screen is taken up by images collected from Google Maps, a small steering wheel that moves, and arrows that indicate where the car can go. The column on the right side of the screen provides real-time details such as how many drivers are online, the number of votes that each option is getting (sounding the horn is surprisingly unpopular), and the number of miles driven since the beginning of the road trip (about 450 as of writing). There's also a live chat which reminds me of the chat rooms that were popular in the 2000s, both in terms of the design and in terms of the random shit people digitally blurt out, and a radio at the bottom.
If you want to 'drive,' it's as easy as clicking on an arrow. Open the site, click on the direction that you want to take the car in, wait about four seconds for the other drivers to make a choice, and the steering wheel will veer in the direction that receives the most votes. Every intersection spawns a heated debate in the old-school chat. Of course, sometimes there's only one way to move: Forward. You can't shift into reverse, for better or worse. You even have to vote to change the radio station because, remember, everyone's in the same car. It's kind of hard to go anywhere on purpose when people keep pulling the car into strip mall parking lots. Internet Roadtrip
There has to be at least some sociological and philosophical value in this experiment. Beyond that, the Internet Roadtrip is a cool way to see the country, and discover sights that you likely would have never stumbled upon otherwise. The car's in Scarborough, Maine, at the time of writing, not terribly far from the Canadian border. What will happen if we get there? Will we keep driving and explore the Great White North, or head back south? Nothing moves especially fast on this road trip, but we may not have to wait long to find out. Shoutout to the developer's many other games and absurd curiosities over at neal.fun.
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