Change Agent - Issue 49

Enter telematics and Gridlock. Telematics represents the convergence of wireless communications and global-positioning technology. Much of the telematics work to date has been automotive based, but Gridlock takes it to the next level: It solves the traffic problem -- by providing user-specific guidance in real time. It does this by taking advantage of the fact that quite soon, every cell phone will "know" its own location. The FCC has mandated that phone companies use GPS or similar technologies to make cell phones location-aware in order to improve 911 services. If a cell phone knows where it is, and if it can tell other computers where it wants to go, then we have everything we need to crunch some very serious numbers.

Imagine a million users submitting continuously updated location information to a centralized database. If you're stuck in traffic, the system knows -- because you haven't moved since the last time your device submitted its location. If that computer knows where you are and where you're going and where everybody else is and where they're going, it can route and reroute traffic. Think about that the next time you find yourself stuck outside the Callahan Tunnel for two hours on a Friday afternoon.

Do these two brilliant ideas exist today? No. Could they exist soon? Possibly. Will they exist sooner or later? Absolutely. The future is going to get here even quicker than you'd think, no matter what you hear from the stock market.

Seth Godin (sgodin@fastcompany.com) is the author of Permission Marketing: Turning Strangers Into Friends, and Friends Into Customers(Simon & Schuster, 1999) and Unleashing the Ideavirus (Do You Zoom Inc., 2000). Get his latest book for free on the Web (www.ideavirus.com).