How Software Default Values Impact Real Life
When you write software, to avoid bugs you assign to each variable some default value, that is afterwards supposed to be updated by the program.
The farm at the default location for IP addresses in the USWhat happens when the default value does not get updated? Something like the nightmare of happening to be located at the default value of a mapping application, like what happened to a quiet farm in Kansas. The story told in this Fusion article ‘How an internet mapping glitch turned a random Kansas farm into a digital hell‘ is really though-provoking. Just because it happens to be at the center of the country, it is mapped as the location by default of IP addresses. The article contains many other similar stories of misplaced geographical locations of IP addresses.
It happens all the time also on our favorite online maps when they show the center of a long avenue when searching for an address – this center could be far remote from the actual location we are looking for!
I am not speaking of people driving in entirely wrong locations by their GPS because they did not check that they had selected the adequate town or checked there was actually a road!
Even in this century of overwhelming information some checks are required before believing what the machine says. Stay vigilant!
