If you see a man wandering down the street in Berlin with a red wagon filled with smartphones, don't worry – he's an artist. Simon Weckert, who lives in the German city, collected smartphones from everywhere he could in order to carry out a social experiment: he wanted to see if he could trick Google Maps into thinking there was a lot of traffic in a place where there was almost none. And he figured he could do it with 99 smartphones all stacked together in one place. The idea was that he would "make an impact on the physical world by navigating cars on another route to avoid being stuck in traffic". But, spoiler alert, there would be no other traffic on the street other than him, towing a red wagon filled with smartphones. Weckert spent a day walking up and down a Berlin street, towing his smartphone-filled cart behind him. Sure enough, before long, the street took on a long red line on Google Maps, even though there was no other traffic on the road. And thus he had proved he could use bulk phones to trick Google into thinking there was a large traffic jam. What's the point of the exercise? Well, it's not immediately clear. However, Weckert is an artist who has long focused on the digital world – seeking to "assess the value of technology", rather than its actual use. "He wants to raise awareness of the privileged state in which people live within Western civilisation and remind them of the obligations attached to this privilege," his website says. Weckert pointed out that Google Maps had changed the way we get from A to B, much the same as Airbnb had changed the housing market, Tinder had changed dating culture, and how Deliveroo had changed our food preparation and consumption. "All of these apps function via interfaces with Google Maps and create new forms of digital capitalism and commodification. Without these maps, car sharing systems, new taxi apps, bike rental systems and online transport agency services such as Uber would be unthinkable," he wrote on his website. "Google Maps makes virtual changes to the real city." While that seems harmless enough, Weckert pointed to the fact that questions relating to the power of mapmaking must be "reformulated". He also said that people must be wary of the geotools Google uses. "What is the relationship between the art of enabling and techniques of supervision, control and regulation in Google’s maps? Do these maps function as dispositive nets that determine the behaviour, opinions and images of living beings, exercising power and controlling knowledge?" his website asks. "Maps, which themselves are the product of a combination of states of knowledge and states of power, have an inscribed power dispositive. Google’s simulation-based map and world models determine the actuality and perception of physical spaces and the development of action models." Something to perhaps think twice about next time you're directing yourself to your local restaurant.