Wednesday, September 8

Sometimes I take a binary view of tools: they either work or they don’t work. In this frame of mind things that work poorly fall squarely into the “don’t work” category.

In Porto, Riga or Tallinn the Bolt app works. You set where you want to go, it works out your position, and shows you a list of available drivers. You choose one and the app shows you a little cartoon car driving along the map towards you. At the driver’s end it shows a spot indicating your position. For this to work Bolt must track your position fairly accurately enough for the driver to stop at the right spot.

This never failed us.

In Helsinki the Parkman app requires a similar level of accuracy. You can use it as a replacement for pushing coins into a machine somewhere on the street and getting a ticket to display on your windshield. Instead you log into the Parkman app which notes your position and starts to bill you. Traffic wardens can use their version of the app to check you have registered your position.

This seldom works (if we count “working poorly” as not working). It regularly fails to find the position correctly, or takes several goes to do so. The question that occurs to us: why can Bolt do it and Parkman can’t.

I find myself thinking about this while I am standing in the cold in Hietaniemenkatu waiting for Parkman to have another go at locating us so that it can let us stop paying for the parking space before we leave it. I photograph an obstruction in the road as an act of metaphorical frustration.