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If Google's aim is to be master of all it surveys, then the launch of Google Street View in the UK brings it that much closer to surveying, well, everything.
Privacy campaigners have made a formal complaint to the Information Commissioner about the service, saying that blurring of number plates and faces is insufficient to protect individual anonymity.
Personally, I can't imagine for a nanosecond what use anyone could conceivably make of Street View, unless it was something nefarious or criminal. Eric Schmidt, Google's CEO, assures us that the service's success proves that people "love to see what is going on in their local community". Can he really believe that it's better to do this online, rather than simply walk out the front door? Because that's what I, in my hokey old way, call a street view.
Indeed, why should you have to spend any time online at all - because what the Googlisation of the world means is that necessarily more and more of us have to spend increasing amounts of time in a virtual world; and while we're there, trying to stop invasions of our privacy, our personal data is being uploaded still more into Big Brother's databases.
I've been to the Google "campus" in California's Silicon Valley, where I gave a lecture on the psychology of place. Like most visitors, I was struck by the kidult feel of the organisation - lunch was in a vast salad bar, decorated with models made from household junk, while the offices were brightly painted in primary colours. When I came to give my lecture, most of the 40-strong audience weren't looking at me but tapping away on their laptops. Needless to say, I refused to speak unless they desisted, and found - to my surprise - that when I had their attention they were perfectly civil people.
But then that's the thing about Big Brother: he's not just big - he's also your older sibling, with all the care that this implies. Moreover, like most younger brothers and sisters, we look up to our big brother. That Google is an aspect of a Big Brother surveillance society that is insidiously coming to dominate our society, and which has the potential to be abused for the worst possible kind of repression, I have absolutely no doubt. That we not only acquiesce in this but even assist it, is because we too are lulled into thinking it's all play and no work.
Google provides us, gratis, with an amazing internet search engine; it maps our globe. Google is also in the process of trying to make available almost everything that is published globally, online. All of these boons lead us to love Big Brother. See how benign he is, we think, how much he wants to educate us and help us find our way home.
But don't be fooled, in the last analysis Big Brother remains Big Brother, and his key attribute is that he's watching you.
Just walk my way, Michelle
The lovely Michelle Obama will no doubt accompany her husband to London for the G20 summit of world leaders next week. Some people have been wondering what Ms Obama will get up to while hubby is saving world capitalism in the Excel Centre — after all, Canning Town isn't exactly a sightseeing destination. But I have faith in Michelle: I'm sure she'll want to walk the mean streets of one of Britain's most deprived areas, and I'm just the fellow to show her. She may be the First Lady but, when it comes to the red carpet reception, I'm the last in line. And if she wants to tread where ordinary Londoners go, I'd be happy to escort her.
Hacked off with Hackney
To the Purcell Room for an evening of readings, films and music to celebrate the publication of Iain Sinclair's magisterial account of his manor: Hackney, That Rose Red Empire. I did my turn, Rachel Lichtenstein showed a film of her uncle, a Jewish barber who snipped off the Mile End Road, Michael Rosen declaimed some poems, Sinclair himself read from the book to the accompaniment of John Harle's piercingly strange soprano saxophone.
The evening would have seemed merely evocative of another era — when the avant-garde still meant something — were it not that Iain has been barred from making appearances in Hackney libraries and council venues due to his spirited opposition to the Olympic boondoggle. When a writer of Sinclair's stature is forced to seek asylum on the South Bank, you know there must really be something rotten in the state of Stratford Marsh.
Reader views (13)
From my experience, the people who complain about CCTV, Street View, etc. are the ones who are up to no good. I know of one cul-de-sac in Aberdare that won't last five minutes on Street View - heaven forbid the residents might get caught out by HMRC for fiddling benefits, bootlegging cigarettes or both!
- Martin, Aberdare, 21/07/2009 15:28
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I dont get why so many people complain about google street view.
I'd love to be on there... it will become part of history.
If they force google to take it down, then it's just going to be another case of the world going mad.
- Joseph Euan, Somerset, UK, 21/07/2009 14:28
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Have you got something to hide? is that why you dont want google to show your house or garage? Big brother has nothing to do with it, it's called progress. If you dont like it then dont have a pc, i bet you have got one and proberly a laptop and one of them mobile phones that go on the net as well.
- John, London, 21/07/2009 14:28
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Great Britain is the most surveilled society in the world, apparently. There are cameras everywhere, recording all day, every day. Our phones track our movements. Our spending is stored & analysed. Our whole lives are being watched & recorded. So I'm not sure I understand why so many people are suddenly jumping up & down about Google Streetview, when all it really amounts to a snapshot of our cities last summer. Could it be because Google had the temerity to show us the photographs they took? Could it be that actually seeing even just a little of what all those cameras record is what has so many people excercised, babbling about invasion of privacy? I think it might be & that looks like a case of like shooting the messenger to me!
- T Hamill, Belfast, NI, 21/07/2009 14:28
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google street view is great fun KEEP IT !
- Greentea02, london, 21/07/2009 14:28
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The Excel centre is surrounded by huge new housing developments, but some people can deprivation anywhere.
- Richard, London, England, 21/07/2009 14:28
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qHmmm - what use is it? You're moving house and you want to see the street you're considering; You've got a meeting and you want to make sure where the building is; you're considering a business deal and want to see the premises; you're nosey and want to see a certain location; you're booking a hotel and want to check the area looks OK or where to park.... It is a FANTASTIC service with endless uses. It even gives Grumpy Old Men something to complain about...
- Jonny, Glasgow, UK, 21/07/2009 14:28
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Calling this an invasion of privacy is absolutely ridiculous.
If you don't want someone to look at your house, then you put up a fence. Simple as that. Google's Street View is no different than someone walking down the street, looking around. It's not like they're walking on your property, opening your door, and rummaging through your closets.
- Joseph, Alabama, USA, 21/07/2009 14:28
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Big Brother comes alive under the political correct Labour government !
- Joe, Swanley Kent, 21/07/2009 14:28
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Jonny, Glasgow, I agree, it can be useful. People are blowing this out of proportion. Rollo, where do you live then? Is your house the one with the pink front door and Thomas The Tank Engine curtains?
- Mick, Ireland, 21/07/2009 14:28
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You should read this:
http://www.dni.gov/speeches/20071023_speech.pdf
Combine this with the emerging notion of extinct newspapers, and reflect on it a while.
- Michael S. Woodson, Denver USA, 21/07/2009 14:28
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This is worse than 1984. We have the right to privacy, this definitely invades our lives. Why on earth do people think they have the right to know everything about all of us? It matters not whether we have anything to hide, it is an invasion of privacy. I have nothing to hide, but that it not the point.
- Polly, Hailsham UK, 21/07/2009 14:28
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Why MUST everybody see my street, my house, and my front door???!!!
Why must THE WHOLE WORLD know what my curtains look like???
It's insane!
- Rollo, London, 21/07/2009 14:28
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