Google Street View is cause for both concern and enthrallment. The first article I caught about it suggested that a worker on an espresso break was caught on camera, his absence from work caught on camera. That does sound creepy, though I wonder why catching an espresso would be cause for concern? (Was it a crappy roast?) Obviously, that’s missing the point that the technology itself seems invasive.

While looking up directions with google maps, I decided to check out the Street View feature. It’s only available in San Francisco, Denver, New York, Miami, and Las Vegas. I can already see the utility of this tool for making map reading a much more visual endeavor. Why do maps exist in their current state? It’s a semiotic code, a way of breaking down geography into symbols that can fit on one page. We didn’t previously have the means to create more accurate visual representations of our surroundings, especially with constraints of scale.

Naturally, I immediately wondered how they do it? Is it live satellite feed? I didn’t think that was likely as the images are pretty detailed. One of the sources of images is from a vehicle with eleven lenses, capable of taking a full image along city streets. That is, of course, why the aforementioned employee on an espresso break wasn’t discovered until weeks later. It also begs another question, which is– why HR would automatically assume that the espresso break was during work hours? I don’t see any time stamp on the images. I sense an urban myth generated to create the sense that this application is totally creepy. Though it does create the potential for severe invasion of privacy, the images of people are very fuzzy and they are not in real-time. Further and frankly, these are street views, and any photographer could capture street views and distribute them through any means. It is the sheer volume of Google’s project that is frightening, and we should all take pause to consider all of the ways in which our perception of what is public and what is private have been flipped upside down by new technologies.

Also of interest is that Google was not the first company to attempt this type of street view documentation. Who else would have the hubris to envision such a project? (Of course, their version is clunkier and less user friendly, but I would expect nothing less…)

For the moment, I remain at least as enthralled as I am creeped out.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 12th, 2007 at 11:14 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.