Operating systems, transit and cultural influences

by edward • 3 years ago

50 23 3 years ago

gtroja• 3 years ago

"This made me realize how much cultural influence bleeds into the features that they provide." Every technology embeds ideas of the culture in which it was developed. For me the posts example is a mild classism.

mcooley• 3 years ago

Tracking flights works better than tracking trains mainly because airlines have global technical standards (coordinated through global bodies like IATA) and rail operators don't. Most of the technical capability to track any flight, anywhere in the world, was built by the airline industry for its own needs and integrated into consumer technology later; I don't think the cultural bias of OS vendors had much to do with it.

wongarsu• 3 years ago

Rail operators are also really good at tracking their trains. There are some issues because a) they started much earlier and have longer upgrade cycles, so in some places the tech is ancient; and b) there's less pressure to interoperate.

That said, there is good data with standard APIs in some places, for example across most of the European rail network. I find it very plausible that a similarly funded company from Switzerland or Estonia would add rail information before they add flight information, and if they had come out with the equivalent of Apple/Google Wallet they might have started out with cooperation with rail services to store your rail ticket in your phone.

aredox6• 3 years ago

The Swiss SBB has a public API for all trains across the European continent. Multiple websites making use of it have been featured on this very website.

There is little excuse. There is, though, quite some lack of curiosity from young American males to anything outside their own little lives

asystole• 3 years ago

Right, so that's one transit company in one country. The whole point is that global flight tracking data is standardised and easily machine-parsable.

cbm-vic-20• 3 years ago

I've had success using the Transit app, which tracks trains and busses, even in the small US city I live in.

And I'm certain there are at least a few people who are not "young American males" working for the companies that are mentioned in the article.

brightlancer• 3 years ago

There is, though, quite some lack of curiosity from young American males to anything outside their own little lives

That's false, bigoted, and has no place in this conversation.

returningfory2• 3 years ago

This is a disgusting comment.

tuukkah2• 3 years ago

I don't think the API does what you think. The realtime data just does not exist for "all trains across the European continent".

justsomehnguy• 3 years ago

There are apps what allow you to monitor transit buses in the real time. They aren't built on 'bus industry' platform or whatever.

shepherdjerred• 3 years ago

I think one part of this is that flying is a much bigger deal than other modes of transport. Many people hate flying and don't do it super often, so many of these features are designed to make the experience a bit easier.

People who use public transit probably use it semi-regularly and thus know where to go for the necessary information.

In summary, flights are done less often, making people less likely to have well established workflows. Public transit is done more frequently, so anyone who uses it probably already has some way to access the information that they need.

bluGill• 3 years ago

This is about longer distance trains not local public transit. That is trips between NYC and Chicago, which is something you can take via train but not a trip anyone would take very often.

The problem with flying isn't so much that people hate it - some like it. However no matter how much you love flying, it is always at least 4 hours of your day to fly anywhere: you have to get to the airport, spend an hour in the airport, then you fly, which for a very short flight might be an hour, then you have to get out of the far airport to where you are going. That is the best case, often it is longer flights and a transfer in some other airport. If the US had a great intercity train system there are many trips that could be faster on trains - but we don't have a great system.

LargoLasskhyfv• 3 years ago

Yah, well...

I'd say a phone from Huawai/HTC, and one of the chinese hyperapps which do everything in their ecosystem would be the 'better' option for that use-case.

If 'we' hadn't booted them out. And if their 'ecosystem' would be interested in interfacing with 'our' services.

That would be so metropian. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropia_(film) )

Operating systems, transit and cultural influences

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