There has been some degree of outcry over Google Map's new Street View function. Why?
The conspiracy theorists are hard at work, trying to convince us all that Big Brother has won another battle in the fight for personal freedom and liberty. Next up it will be identity cards. Pretty soon after, we'll all be walking around with microchips in our frontal cortexes with a permanent Wi-Fi link to a Government super computer, monitoring our every thought. The Party keeps the masses in check with propoganda from Minitrue, weeding out dissenters through the powers of the Thought Police and Room 101, society as we know it ceases to exist ... it's George Orwell's wet dream and it's coming through a computer screen near you.
Thankfully, though, there is an alternative to all this traceability and that's not to give a damn. People use social networking sites to reveal personal, albeit mundane, information about themselves, posting images of their latest booze-fueled vomit fest and having conversations of an all-too-intimate nature on public forums. Believe the conspiracy nuts, and we are but whores of our own demise by allowing what little privacy we have left to be chucked around t'internet.
But what does Google Street View actually show you? Nothing. Well, nothing you can't see for yourself by doing something really out-there, like ... walking down a street. Here we have my living room window:
You'll notice that's my flatmate's scrubs hanging up to dry at the window. Nothing you wouldn't see most days you take a stroll down my street.
Here is my colleague walking into our office:
Again, hardly an extreme invasion of any personal privacy and nothing that can't be seen most mornings at our office. So why all the fuss?
After 5 minutes of playing around with Google Street View, the novelty soon wears off and you realise that it's little more than yet another tool for users of internet land to withdraw from actuality and experience existence as a complex set of algorithms and pixels.
There are those that claim Google Street View to be a useful tool for directions. You know, us menfolk can't be seen to actually stop and ask for directions and so need every tool at our disposal to prevent such an emasculating scenario from ever occuring. However in these days of mobile phones, sat nav, route planner websites and, shudder to think, even good old fashioned maps, that arguement doesn't really pass muster.
Another related development in Big Brother's ever expanding armoury of image surveilance techniques is the PhotoTrackr, a gadget so cutting edge they didn't have time to spell it correctly. An ingenious little widget that hooks on to your camera and records exactly where your pictures were taken - attaching lattitude and longitude data to your digital snaps. Stick them online so that your friends (and MI5) can bring up the exact location on Google Maps. One of those leaps in technology that sounds painfully cool, but a moments thought leads to the inevitable question "Why would anyone actually need this?"
PhotoTrackr and Google Street View are just some of the latest examples of technology that, despite being amazingly cool at face value, are just utterly pointless. So, as long as there aren't any pictures floating around web world of the cannabis farm in your flat or of you driving a lorry full of asylum seekers into the country, chances are that Big Brother, even if he is watching, isn't going to be interested in you anyway.
The conspiracy theorists are hard at work, trying to convince us all that Big Brother has won another battle in the fight for personal freedom and liberty. Next up it will be identity cards. Pretty soon after, we'll all be walking around with microchips in our frontal cortexes with a permanent Wi-Fi link to a Government super computer, monitoring our every thought. The Party keeps the masses in check with propoganda from Minitrue, weeding out dissenters through the powers of the Thought Police and Room 101, society as we know it ceases to exist ... it's George Orwell's wet dream and it's coming through a computer screen near you.
Thankfully, though, there is an alternative to all this traceability and that's not to give a damn. People use social networking sites to reveal personal, albeit mundane, information about themselves, posting images of their latest booze-fueled vomit fest and having conversations of an all-too-intimate nature on public forums. Believe the conspiracy nuts, and we are but whores of our own demise by allowing what little privacy we have left to be chucked around t'internet.
But what does Google Street View actually show you? Nothing. Well, nothing you can't see for yourself by doing something really out-there, like ... walking down a street. Here we have my living room window:
You'll notice that's my flatmate's scrubs hanging up to dry at the window. Nothing you wouldn't see most days you take a stroll down my street.
Here is my colleague walking into our office:
Again, hardly an extreme invasion of any personal privacy and nothing that can't be seen most mornings at our office. So why all the fuss?After 5 minutes of playing around with Google Street View, the novelty soon wears off and you realise that it's little more than yet another tool for users of internet land to withdraw from actuality and experience existence as a complex set of algorithms and pixels.
There are those that claim Google Street View to be a useful tool for directions. You know, us menfolk can't be seen to actually stop and ask for directions and so need every tool at our disposal to prevent such an emasculating scenario from ever occuring. However in these days of mobile phones, sat nav, route planner websites and, shudder to think, even good old fashioned maps, that arguement doesn't really pass muster.
Another related development in Big Brother's ever expanding armoury of image surveilance techniques is the PhotoTrackr, a gadget so cutting edge they didn't have time to spell it correctly. An ingenious little widget that hooks on to your camera and records exactly where your pictures were taken - attaching lattitude and longitude data to your digital snaps. Stick them online so that your friends (and MI5) can bring up the exact location on Google Maps. One of those leaps in technology that sounds painfully cool, but a moments thought leads to the inevitable question "Why would anyone actually need this?"
PhotoTrackr and Google Street View are just some of the latest examples of technology that, despite being amazingly cool at face value, are just utterly pointless. So, as long as there aren't any pictures floating around web world of the cannabis farm in your flat or of you driving a lorry full of asylum seekers into the country, chances are that Big Brother, even if he is watching, isn't going to be interested in you anyway.
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