Driving Screens: Space, Time, and Embodiment in the Use of Waze

Abstract

Originally launched in 2008 and then acquired by Google in summer 2013, Waze is a satellite navigation app which uses crowd-sourced information to help drivers find the quickest route to their destination in real time. With reported 50 million users in 2013, the company claims to be one of the largest community-based traffic and navigation apps, and its success is an indicator that the togetherness it advertises is more than a catchy slogan; for Waze, strength is in numbers. Although the company reserves the right to disclose how many of its users are based in the UK, they disclose that London alone has a reported 80,000 Wazers. The app’s appeal to an audience of drivers is due to a variety of factors which include the fact that it is free to use, its gamified nature, and the ability it has to redirect drivers’ navigation when road conditions change, minimizing the time drivers need to spend on the road. This chapter conceptually explores Waze as an extension of the car. By discussing the act of physical driving alongside digital guiding, it capitalises on the hybridity between person, space, and machine (referring both to the vehicle and the app). Waze functions via direct participation of the user: it sets a route from an origin to a destination by calculating the quickest route to minimise travel time and petrol consumption, but if the driver experiences any delays along the route, the app provides a platform for the user to report the problem to the server. Waze then reroutes any vehicles which have been sent down that same route. This idea of users working together to outsmart traffic brings about a notion of community but one that is transactional and detached. The drivers do not know each other; they appear as small avatars zooming through a digital map, but they often feel a sense of responsibility to the app to provide data to help other users. Through studying Waze, the chapter seeks to explore the alternate forms of community and digital citizenship that manifests through the app, as well as rethinking the public/private coding of the road space. The interior of the car, often associated with a solitary disconnection to the external environment is re-examined as a penetrable space for digital forms of social interaction. The act of driving, when coupled with Waze, takes on a complex role enabling new spatial relations and subjectivities.