Had an interesting conversation about Google Traffic with my step-daughter the other day. Originally, my wife was supposed to pick her up, but the way things worked out was it made more sense for me to intercept her at the bus station and then bring her back from home. We were able to calculate timings and distance using Google Traffic.
I was explaining to her "life before Google": those days that I would work late at the client only to be stuck in traffic because a game just got out. We don't know how to avoid these jams because we didn't have Google traffic in those days and so we just had to wait it out.
She was a bit bewildered at the prospects of having to plan one's journey without having the benefit of being able to use Google Traffic. She compared to an era when trains didn't have the benefit of centrally coordinated time zones. As explained in this PBS clip, both trains and cities independently maintained their time based on the sun. Consequently, a train passenger had no way of knowing when they would arrive at their destination because the cities didn't coordinate on time. Hence, the invention of time zones.
And that's the connection.
We can no longer can we blame traffic for being late for an engagement, as we should have checked Google Traffic before we left to make sure we are on time. Google Traffic has now become essential to coordinating with others. Even for getting things done more efficiently requires us to leverage such information. For me, it helped me pick up my step-daughter and made me realize that I hailed from a pre-historic era ;)
Author: Malik Datardina, CPA, CA, CISA. Malik works at Auvenir as a GRC Strategist that is working to transform the engagement experience for accounting firms and their clients. The opinions expressed here do not necessarily represent UWCISA, UW, Auvenir (or its affiliates), CPA Canada or anyone else.
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