Reversing the Google Car.

I live in a democratic society….?
A company, Google, originating from another country has just gone and ‘mapped’ me! I was not asked about this, so far as I am aware. Do I mind? Could this be something which impinges upon me and therefore something I/we should be critical of ? Should I have prepared a defence, a counter, or at the very least prepared a position relative to such a momentous event?


In many ways a corporation like Google are doing no more that any number of corporate interests in our whereabouts. If you use supermarkets, collection of your personal details automatically happens when you use a bank card to pay for goods. Payment by plastic ties you to a time, place, postcode and logs varying degrees of detail on purchase-preferences across products and brands. We are used to our data being counted and sifted under the guise of providing a variety of choice and other helpful commercial platitudes. We then have to contend with a plethora of targeted advertising for our trouble.


The opaque nature of intrusion into our citizen privacy, is constantly monitored and often challenged by organisations like www.privacyinternational.org. But who looks at what Google is doing?


Searching and representation appear to be a constituency to which Google belongs. Consider a report like the business owner in the link below, who challenges the selection algorithms employed by Google Search Engine to place his company in a Google search engine results page (SERP). http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=14240. Also on this forum, ‘Tripodero’ complains, Google Search is “…actually reading the HTML!...” from his company web pages. He shows examples of the messy, non-businesslike listing in the Google SERP and he asks, “Is there anyway I can fix this?” I guess not!?


The Google Search connects to Google Maps, allowing a user to access the geographical implications of a web search. The search engine has in a sense canonised the map, providing the first step into Google Maps by searching and representing location.


Google Map’s are recorded by Satellite, the Street View is recorded by vehicles of various types. Cars are used for roads and bikes are used on pedestrian ways, cycle paths and non traffic streets in our towns and cities.


Images are recorded by the vehicles and afforded a Global Position (GPS), recording coordinates of where the image was recorded in the world. When the images are collected and processed they are presented to consumers through Google’s browser based on line service. It is here that most of us first encounter Google maps and street view and where an intriguing set of fragmentations can be observed.


The Times newspaper reports Google complaint stories; the fact that you can ask Google to remove your house, your face or even your whole body from Google Street View, if you are not convinced that you cannot be recognised, which is an infringement of your human rights…http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article5945132.ece


and:

http://geocarta.blogspot.com/2005/10/more-complaints-over-google-maps.html
Here is a complaint by President Abdul Kalam on questions of security and the potential help to terrorists. This is echoed below in Northern Ireland.


http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/lifestyle/technology-gadgets/google-maps-street-view-lsquomay-be-a-security-threatrsquo-14237716.html
“…Stormont Assembly member Ian Paisley jnr has branded the internet giant (Google) “reckless” for including photos of the perimeters of police stations and army barracks in Northern Ireland…” Such is the state of concern.


The link below contains the story of someone who has built their own D-I-Y, surround camera system for his car, competing with the Google Car. Someone comments on the page, why would you want to build your own camera car? http://gizmodo.com/5371100/diy%20-google-street-view-camera-lets-you-infuriate-shut+ins-for-fun-and-profit (someone for the festival I instantly thought!)


The RGC project is pursuing the question what do Google Maps and Google Street View mean to us?


I /we, take my/our life/lives as a foreground and its placement in the background of my choice seriously. This is composition. My work as a citizen is about composing myself upon the landscape around me. As a 21 century citizen, should I have expected to have been consulted on my being pictorially mapped? For I was not ! Certainly I should, because this act usurps and interrupts the ‘private intentionality of citizen composition’.


Google are now challenging us by producing an entirely new image to our reality; that which has become Google Maps and Google Street View.

At its widest view Google Earth presents a Globe which can be turned to present different views of the continents and the poles. The view point is taken from space. The view point is omnipotent, God like, from here the globe may be ‘held’ or ‘visited’. By zooming in, the closest details of street view are accessed via gradual enlargements and changes of pictorial resolution which, depending on speed of internet connection, may be continuous or in haltering stages.


Arriving in Street View
Images collected by Google are a-temporal, recorded area by area, each representing a different time zone. A patchwork of images which when stitched together present a Whole. It is not a Whole. What is the effect of this upon us?


The city presented by Google is as Fujihata notes full of ‘ghosts'. Blurry parts of people arching, blurring, tweening between frames of ill fitting earth history. Most potent are images of my place and where I have been. Where is everyone in the city? (Fujihata) and from who’s viewpoint are we looking (Davidson and Fujihata)? Who indeed is responsible for this viewpoint? (Fujihata and Davidson) and who will take responsibility for it (Fujihata)?


In a world of maps created by and for the ruling classes, the fundamental difference with Google is the mirage and mirror of our world and the Golden Standard it proposes its self as (Groves C.)


GD Oct 1st 2009