GPS Message: “Read Ayn Rand”

For a group who claim to be individualists, many Ayn Rand supporters have turned into an incredibly supportive cult. One devoted fan used GPS to place the above message on Google Earth. Gizmodo reports:

One man drove 12,238 miles and across 30 states in the U.S. to scrawl a message that could only be viewed using Google Earth. His big shoutout: “Read Ayn Rand.”

Nick Newcomen did a road trip over 30 days that covered stretches from the Pacific to the Atlantic Ocean. First, he identified on a map the route he would need to drive to spell out the message. He put a GPS device in his car to trace the route he would follow. Then, he hit the road.

“The main reason I did it is because I am an Ayn Rand fan,” he says. “In my opinion if more people would read her books and take her ideas seriously, the country and world would be a better place – freer, more prosperous and we would have a more optimistic view of the future.”

Newcomen, unlike previous GPS artists, actually traveled the lines he traced on the map. He used a GPS logger (Qstarz BT-Q1000X) to “ink” the message. Starting his trip in Marshall, Texas, he turned on the device when he wanted to write a letter and turned off the device between letters. The recorded GPS data was loaded into Google Earth to produce the image above.

“The first word I wrote actually was the word ‘Rand’, then I went up North to do the word ‘Read’ and finished it with ‘Ayn,'” says Newcomen.

He better hope that there aren’t any Canadians who respond by doing the same with “Don’t.”

7 Comments

  1. 1
    Patricia Shannon says:

    This has always been a cult.

  2. 2
    Top Gps Reviews says:

    » GPS Message: “Read Ayn Rand” Liberal Values http://bit.ly/dn6qL9 #gps

  3. 3
    Deni Dithyrambic says:

    We now have scientific evidence that Ayn Rand followers have way too much time on their hands.

  4. 4
    Ron Chusid says:

    It was an incredible waste of time. If we were to find that this is a fake (such as quickly drawing on a map as opposed to doing the driving) I’m not sure if I’d think less or more of the person.

  5. 5
    blogs of the world says:

    He used a GPS logger (Qstarz BT-Q1000X) to ?ink? the message. Starting his trip in Marshal… http://reduce.li/ii5e9z #message

  6. 6
    Captin Sarcastic says:

    I am fan of some of Rand’s fiction, I think Fountainhead was wonderful and I enjoyed Atlas Shrugged, but some was absurdly juvenile, like Anthem. I would argue that the elements of integrity and personal responsibility can be very helpful to individuals, but her caricatures of anyone remotely interested in social justice, charity, and community showed her complete lack of understanding of not only people who wish to help others, but the benefits to society of having safety nets. Far too many people talk about the positive aspects of selfishness, while they drive on the roads and go to the universities and enjoy the technology that collectivist policies have created. Mogadishu is a Randian paradise, no taxes, no regulation, and your success is 100% based on your ability (mostly the ability to kill indescriminately) and you don’t see them inventing anything of value over there, save perhaps new and exciting ways to steal stuff.

    My personal view is that we should try to live like Howard Roarke, but support policies that help put others in a position to live like Howard Roarke as well.  Public schools and universities in America have done more to allow people to achieve their personal ambitions and make this country great than any libertarian ideal every has or ever will. The public gave Americans the tools to achieve, but without that gift, we would still be a nation of farmers and wage slaves… oh wait, we are heading back in that direction now because of those libertarian/conservative policies.

  7. 7
    Ron Chusid says:

    I like Rand from the perspective of her giving a philosophical defense of capitalism after she experienced life in the Soviet Union. Unfortunately she does take her views to an irrational extreme, and a whole cult has developed which follows this.

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