When we all have equally precise, equally up-to-the-second information on traffic conditions, the odds are that we’ll all respond in similar ways. As we all act in unison to avoid one bottleneck, we’ll just create a new bottleneck. We may come to look back fondly on the days when information was less uniformly distributed.
While this situation could be avoided through a smarter traffic system that doles out different information to each driver the surfers’ dilema is a tougher nut to crack. In the case of traffic we would be willing to trust the system to effeciently route us all. We wouldn’t be bothered that it is sending us through Waterford and not Limerick as it is our destination that is important, not where we go through to get there (to a point.) If however you told half the surfers to go to Misty Cliffs and the other half to go to Noordhoek each half would be wondering what the other half was getting and probably buck the system.
There is social engineering in there that I don’t like the thought of.
I do think though that the adventurers Nicholas Carr is worried about will simply keep on going. The pressures on them may change but their end goal remains and they may even be able to use the system to find blind-spots they would have otherwise missed.
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