The Lady Geek's Topic of the Day: Microsoft's New GPS Patent

Tales of the Lady Geek:

Greetings dear readers, as I write today’s article, I am sitting in my dining room sipping from a cup of warm peppermint tea, blanketed in my favored chenille robe and plush pink bunny slippers. Yes, they do still make them only mine have Mr. Spock heads on them instead of bunnies. Tonight, I am all about comfort. 

It’s a rainy day in the City of Brotherly love, the overcast day matching my mood perfectly as I am cast back in time a few years ago to my very first job as a computer support technician in the heart of an electronics chain. Although I had graduated from trade school several years earlier, and had worked as part of a computer technician’s temporary agency, this was my first official tech job and I was proud. Even as I woke and donned the dowdy and decidedly stereotypical geekiform I had been provided for that first day, I was proud to be a member of this ‘elite’ team.

I arrived and the first thing I was taught on the job was about racism in the workplace.  The only other black the member of the team greeted me, “Oh, hello! You must be that token black woman they warned us about. Don’t worry about a thing, just stand here and be black and a woman and you will do fine.” Of course, he was ‘joking’.  

During the course of that first day, I was instructed on the proper way to use a grounding mat, the proper way to install memory and the proper way to connect a monitor to a laptop, despite my constant assertions of my experience and the flashing of my A+ certification card.

I was told by customers that, “I need a real technician. I’ll wait for one of the guys.” After being introduced to the district manager he said, “Oh, so you’re X’s pet ethnic woman! Nice to meet you.”  Those first months were hard, but I persevered and within four months I was promoted to assistant manager based on my work and value to the company alone.  I was then made honorary manager six months later after ours picked up and left based on my merits alone.

Even then, I was faced daily with, “May I see a manager? I mean a real manager?” and very rarely, I was greeted in sisterly warmth by feminists, “You go Girl! Glad to see one of us in this job! You put the woman’s movement up a few years.”  

I faced sexism, racism and blatant disrespect daily with great decorum, humility, skill and grace. I used that as fuel to excel. That’s what my people have done for generations and I know in my lifetime as not only a black computer technician but a black woman computer technician – the grease monkey of computers – I will again. It’s kind of what comes along with the territory.

All these years later, I sit here, in my dining room, ready to approach an extremely irritating topic.

The Lady Geek’s Topic of the Day:

Microsoft’s New Patent for “Pedestrian Route Production” 

After tonight’s news broadcast, I was left with a disturbing yet familiar “Here we go again” feeling because I was told in the broadcast only that Microsoft was garnering controversy for a new Patent it had filed for. This patent was allegedly for an App entitled:  “Avoid Ghetto GPS”.  At first, I was shocked and appalled and ready to immediately toss out all of my lovely PCs, restock with Apple products, put on my hippie gear, hop on a bus, march on Washington and sing old Negro spirituals a la Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. 

A split second later, I realized No one is that stupid! So begins my topic for today. After that tidbit hit the airwaves, a quick internet search brought many kinds of “Oh how racist, we must now boycott Microsoft!” postings on a variety of different ‘news sites’ and of course Facebook was alive with the ‘Real Face of Microsoft”.

So, I decided to do the one thing these so called reporters apparently didn’t do, go to the United States Patent Office’s official website where a quick flick of my fingers brought me to the actual Patent that Microsoft filed on January 3, 2012.

What Is It?

“Pedestrian Route Production”

This is what the opening of Microsoft’s Patent says:

“As a pedestrian travels, various difficulties can be encountered, such as traveling through an unsafe neighborhood or being in an open area that is subject to harsh temperatures. A route can be developed for a person taking into account factors that specifically affect a pedestrian.  Moreover, the route can alter as a situation of a user changes; for instance, if a user wants to add a stop along a route.”

It goes on to further explain that: “Computer-driven automobile route planning applications are utilized to aid users in locating points of interest, such as particular buildings, addresses, and the like…a large amount of focus in route generation has focused upon vehicle route generation and little attention has been paid to pedestrian route production….there has been a long felt need for route generation towards individuals that do not commonly travel by vehicles and generally travel by walking.  In addition, unexpected results can take place through practice of the disclosed innovation…due to detailed route planning, a direction set can be created that allows a user to take more diverse paths that can compensate for a general lack of speed.”

So basically, the application Microsoft gained the patent for, is supposed to be a GPS for those of us city folk that walk and use public transportation.  Microsoft is saying that while GPS in cars is a great thing, and very heavily relied upon in this day and age, it has been lacking when it comes to the inclusion of average pedestrians. This GPS was created to address that issue. Nowhere in their patent application does it say “Point out the Ghetto to keep White people safe while on a stroll.” 

Why the Fuss?:

Apparently, the recently approved GPS patent has been labeled the “avoid ghetto" app because of the following excerpt from the patent: “Moreover, it can be more dangerous for a pedestrian to enter an unsafe neighborhood than a person in a vehicle since a pedestrian is more exposed and it is more difficult for her to leave an unsafe neighborhood quickly. However, there are advantages to being a pedestrian traveler; if a pedestrian takes an incorrect action (e.g., turns down a wrong street), then correcting can be easier since there are commonly fewer one-way pedestrian streets.”

My Point of View:

I am a woman who’s lived both in the Suburbs and Ghetto. I have lived in New York and Philadelphia. I don’t drive because I am a city girl whose two homes happen to have not only the best public transportation in the universe but the best off the cuff entertainment. Sometimes walking into a business or social engagement takes me through more unfamiliar territory. I am looking forward to testing Microsoft’s new app as soon as it’s released and hopefully recommending it to you, dear readers.  There is nothing wrong with wanting to provide pedestrian safety.

Yet the terms “Unsafe Neighborhood” and “Wrong Street” have caused some ignorant, "racially sensitive", reverse bigots to infer that Microsoft has not the pedestrian community at heart but instead wants to keep innocent people from the harsh ghettos of America. That is obnoxious and insulting!
 

Have you any idea how many ‘unsafe neighborhoods’ there are in the United States? In some parts of PA’s upper class Marion Township as well as some parts of Great Neck New York you cannot walk three feet without passing a registered sex offender’s house. How do I know this? Currently, I rely on my Photon 4G’s Life 360 app to keep me abreast of such things as well as Police stations, fire houses and bus routes. Does wanting to be safe among sex predators make this African American woman racially insensitive? 

Last Words on the Topic:

Sometimes people judge a book by its cover. Sometimes people try to be too racially sensitive. Sometimes reporting can be shoddy. I believe this is a case of all three. As a black woman in America, I get angry when people try to put a fake racist face on an honest topic. I resent that so many people of non ethnic background would allow the term, “unsafe neighborhood” to bring to mind Ghetto and still consider themselves ‘evolved’, ‘Politically Correct’ citizens.

Any honest minority will gladly tell you this about racism in America:  Yes, it does still exist. From Silicon Valley to North Philadelphia, from Washington D.C. to Anchorage Alaska, racism is alive and well. Any person of any race or mix thereof from anywhere in this country has or will have to encounter real racism in the form of being stopped by police for ‘Walking While Black’, or by having to provide you’re A+ certification card to a customer just for the "privilege" of working on their computer. We have to face it from all fronts of life every day.  

Finally, I would ask that the larger media groups not add to the problem by making up a case of racism. Or maybe, I should say, I would ask the mainstream media to better hide their prejudice in the future.   To everyone else, please research before you decide to take a position! 

Written by: MaryAnn Paris