Getting from A to Z
We spend our life on the road. Venue to venue setting up AV kit. We’ve been doing it for years. In fact we’ve been working in some venues for over 30 years. So you’d think we’d know how to get there….
In the good old days we’d have an A-Z. Blimey, do you remember them? You’d need an A-Z map for each major city, along with a national road map. How times have changed.
We now live in an age where our planet has been digitally mapped to every corner by companies such as Google and Apple. Your phone can pinpoint your exact position. In seconds it can direct you to wherever you want to go, the fastest possible route and know any traffic problems you may encounter. Pretty incredible if you think about it.
As incredible it is, this technology has now become the decision maker on the road.
Last week we provided Audio Visual support at an event in a hotel in Birmingham. We’ve been there many times before, we know how to get there. However, leaving our Coventry office early on the morning of the event our Sat Nav suggested a completely different route from our usual one. The route it suggested was just random, honestly, random. ‘Can’t be right?’ we said. But, without argument, we set off completely guided by our Sat Nav. The Sat Nav had just overruled our years of road knowledge. We knew the way, but we gave in to it without a thought. Scary stuff.
As it happened, we arrived on time at the venue. Perhaps our Sat Nav took us away from a traffic jam, we don’t know, but if nothing else we did get to see parts of Coventry and Birmingham that we’ve never seen before.
But just think about it, we are starting to be controlled by our devices/technology. They are doing our thinking. The machines are taking over. Soon these machines will be so far advanced that they’ll be asking us for our clothes, our boots and our motorcycles… Yep, we had to get a ‘Terminator’ reference in here somehow!
Makes you wonder how the young AV technicians of the future will cope when their phone/Sat Nav dies on route to a hotel in Birmingham in 2026. Maybe they’ll need an A-Z map!
