From Rob Owen - Google Car reminds me...

The reversal of the Google Car is an interesting debating point; and my first reaction was "what does it matter?" Who cares if the camera on wheels comes whizzing down the road scooping up images and depositing them into some far off virtual space. Except of course, that far-off space is rather close and infact only a few clicks away for anyone who wants to see it, but who would want to? 


A few months ago I did catch a glimpse of the said vehicle trundling down through our rural village - but I can't say I was compelled to look up the results on a webiste. I know what our house looks like. I know what the street looks like. Why would I want to see it on screen? Maps from the air are different of course, and when we bought our house over a year ago, one of the first thing we did was have a look at Google Maps - and yes there it was: our house, complete with garden, greenhouse and extensive tree vegetation.


We even looked at it a few months later and blow me - the image had changed! It was now our car in the drive - and not that of the previous owner. The image had been updated and of course no-one told us. There was no postcard from those nice men and women at Google saying,'oh by the way we've had a bit of a fly through and now you'll be glad to know that we've got the very latest image of your lovely rural dwelling - nice bit of gardening by the way.' Nope - none of that. So something's going on. There's somebody, somewhere gathering lots of images and data at ever increasing frequency. How soon before the images are collected and updated every month, every week..even daily? Is that what will happen if the Google car accelerates?


Our postman, Percy, delivers the letters at around 9.15 every morning and as part of the service he drops off the Sun newspaper to the house over the road. Whilst I was on holiday during the summer, I noticed that prior to popping the newspaper through the letter box, Percy would have a good gawp at Page Three. I must have been quite bored, because this daily ritual became a bit if a joke - as I hid behind the curtains waiting for Percy to park outside, leave the van running and walk upto next door - before defly having a sneaky look at a topless woman and then pushing the folded paper through the letter box. But once the Google car accelarates, I'll no doubt be able to see this little ritual on line!


The Google Car also got me thinking about how organisations collect data, with no apparent purpose. We are all now required to record our time in work. Our wonderful IT/Corporate Services dept. have decided that we need to know what everyone is doing. This is crucial information for managers. We've spent too long managing budgets and ignored managing the staff's time. Great, so far. Anyway, the new system gets introduced and it looks like the work we do as an organisation of 450 staff spread across 16 offices in Wales can be classified into 1645 different activities. Isn't that great to know! Then the system they devise sets out that we must record our time according to 15 min blocks. Now, not all members of staff will undertake all 1645 activties, obviously, but you can do the maths yourself..there are 30, 15 min blocks in each 7hr 30 min days...so 450 staff x 1645 activities x 30 time units/day...that's one heck of a lot of data each day of the year! And for what? Here's the shocker, once that data is collected, hardly anyone looks at it. Seriously! You might look at your own time sheet, if you had nothing to do; or if you had even more time and you were bored, ala Percy-watching, you might have a sneaky look at how someone else is spending their time. But for the most part you wouldn't ever glance at it ever again. So what's this all about? Maybe it's the same phenomenum as the Google Car..ie colleceting endless data that has no real meaning?


Meanwhile life goes on. There's a 'which is the tail and which is the dog issue' here. We seem to collect data because we can - but there's hardly any apparent use for it. Did we have a debate in society and decide that what we need is endless images of every street in Britain, so that we can all see where everyone else lives? Perhaps I missed that one. Maybe there was an announcement over the summer and I was too busy looking through the curtains to catch a glimpse of Percy. Damn! I've missed something again! That just goes to show that you've always got to be plugged into the system. Keeping an eye out for the latest new thing. More e-mails that's what we need! I only had 143 in work yesterday, something's going wrong. I want information to flow my way in a faster and faster fashion. I was twitter and blogs (oops this is one, isn't it?) and I want to know what everyone, and I mean everyone, is doing at all times please. That should be easy.


Maybe the Google Car can't be slowed down. Maybe all this speeding up and data nonsense is the same thing. Maybe we're accelerating into the oblivion, getting closer and closer to the Sun (Percy was just a pioneer) until we all combust into a smouldering couldren of data - a mass of irrelvant information and facts. We're doomed Captain Mainwairing..we're doomed!


Maybe the only way to reverse the Google car is to let it accelerate. Just make sure you're not still on board.
You've been warned!"
I could rant further but I feel a pint calling me for some far distant pub! I'll be there for 1 hour and 45 minutes if anyone cares to know....
Cheers


Rob