Breaking Digital Gridlock, + Website

Preface

grid·lock

ˈgridˌläk

noun

noun: gridlock; plural noun: gridlocks

1. a traffic jam affecting a whole network of intersecting streets.

Have you ever been in serious gridlock? When I was working in California, I would often have to drive from Pasadena to Yorba Linda. The 40-mile trip often took me three to four hours. Many days I would find myself on a freeway at a dead stop, sometimes for hours. It's a helpless feeling to sit there in your car, not moving. You are stuck and have no idea when it will clear up. Perhaps most unnerving is that you don't always know what is causing the gridlock.

While you settle in for the long wait, you start to look around. You get familiar with the people in other cars. Sometimes there is a weird moment where you catch them looking at you, and then you quickly look away (after all, it's not good gridlock etiquette to stare). The smell of the exhaust forces you to recirculate the air in your car. As you inch along the route, you suddenly find yourself reading every street sign and examining all of the details of the freeway that you wouldn't normally notice. Every now and then, you get just a glimpse of hope because the brake lights in front of you disappear and you move forward 10 or 15 feet and you think, “This is it! We are moving again!” Sometimes you even get up to 15 or 20 miles an hour and you begin to celebrate with your gridlock mates, remote high-fiving and smiling, mouthing the words, “We're moving!”—only to have the brake lights ...