In Ridley Scott’s Alien, there’s a scene in which Tom Skerrit’s character, Dallas, attempts to hunt down the titular creature as it slinks through their spaceship’s duct system (Why would a spaceship have a huge duct system? I don’t know). At the same time, Sigourney Weaver’s, Ripley, monitors the two through a crude GPS, showing Dallas and the Alien as blinking nodes dancing across an illuminated grid.
I couldn’t help but think of this scene while sitting in front of my web browser, watching a tiny, digital delivery truck slowly navigate the spaghetti of streets in Boston towards my house.
