We Make the Road by Walking

Roads, as we know them today, are common necessities. These manicured paths we traverse day-in and day-out have become public infrastructure that allow societies and culture to grow and thrive throughout the world.

While trade routes and migratory paths existed as early as 5000 BC, the Romans are credited for dramatically improving road technology. In order to move armies quickly and efficiently in their conquest of the known world, Roman roads were made from deep beds of layered crushed stone to ensure smooth and dry wheeled chariot travel.

The rest, as they say, is history.

Roads now guide us as we travel around the world. It’s become second nature for us. Roads lead us to knowledge institutions like museums and libraries. They lead us to business ventures and recreational activities alike. Their benefits are analogous to a real-world internet that facilitates analog connections between people and places. Roads, alongside the advent paper, have perhaps done more to support the democratization and dissemination of ideas throughout physical space than any other technological development in history.

In a practical sense, roads are awesome. We wouldn’t be where we are as a global culture without them. Metaphorically, however, and in the context of the modern technology landscape, I think the concept a road or a predetermined path that connects point A and point B deserves some examination.

Computer scientist Bran Ferren is noted for saying:

Technology is the stuff that doesn’t work yet.

I love this quote. Scaling Ferren’s thesis out a bit, we can infer that technologists are the beating hearts that take the stuff that doesn’t work yet to a place of functional distinction. Through passion, obsession and an inherent need to make, technologists dedicate their lives to building things that impact our lives. Software and hardware often get the glory, but let us not forget that human spirit and ingenuity have tread the ground leading to these palaces of pixels.

As Ferren’s quote implies, the most compelling technology projects solve new problems, often in surprising and exquisitely considered ways. Creative technologists regularly need to be transported to a place existing roads won’t take them.

When it comes to true innovation, there is no city grid. Google Maps won’t help you. Macadam turns to asphalt turns to gravel turns to dirt turns to lush old growth. Instead of following existing roadmaps, we are required to forge new paths. We reverse engineer our future. And as our feet fall from common trails, we press our soles into the new fresh earth. Quicksand and jagger bushes be damned.

Turn off your GPS. Disable location services. Carry a machete. Take a step. Then take another. And then one more.

We make the road by walking.