Electronic warfare

What electronic warfare can learn from a wagon full of smartphones

A single red wagon, hand pulled down the middle of a lightly traveled street, is an odd delivery mechanism for an electronic warfare attack.

It is only slightly less unusual as a kind of art exhibit. But the wagon’s payload, and its artist brush, is the same: 99 second-hand smartphones, all opened to Google Maps.

In a simple demonstration, Berlin-based artist Simon Weckert rolled the wagon full of phones through several streets and, in so doing, created virtual traffic jams as Google Maps interpreted the phones as slow-moving cars. Screen captures of the demonstration, paired with video from the street, show the traffic mapper interpreting the wagon phones as first nothing, then as a slowdown, and then in a deep red line painted over the virtual road, as a rush hour-esque standstill.

It is not that often that a Berlin digital arts experiment has lessons for electronic warfare and digital manipulation, but with the greater proliferation of virtual environments its worth pulling a few principles from this wagon of tricks.