On Technology in our Lives

Less than 24 hours later, and ssh-ing each others computer to make it talk has become part of household life. 'Come downstairs lunch is ready' 'turn the music down I'm on the phone' 'where are you, you and your laptop have vanished!' echo round the house in Alex's dulcet tones. Although he can't pronounce Alicia properly, coming out with Aleesha. Ugh.

The recent furor over Google's Street View here in the UK has given me the opportunity to think technological impacts through, so I'm going to blab about them in a seemingly random, stream-of-consciousness kinda way. It may be a little haggard because I'm going through some VERY serious chocolate withdrawal and as such can't make it to the shop, and my normally-helpful partner won't go for me because he's a big fat EVE online-playing meanie :( *sob*

So, first I'm going to make a statement, which everyone already knows in some form or another: every new wave of technology is proceeded by a wave of fear - however, this fear is not of technology itself, but of each other, and by extension, the unknown.

Yes, sounds a bit silly. I'll prove it. Let's go WAY back.

Sputnik was awesome. I mean, truly awesome. They managed to get a big round ball with sticky-outy pins to float around the earth and go beep. How awesome? Suddenly, we weren't looking at the stars, we were so close to reaching out and touching them. However! What was the general feeling of the populace? Was it one of achievement, excitement, discovery? Oh no. It was fear. Outright, abject fear (this is fairly famous, but in case you don't believe me, go read Sputnik Crisis), not of the shiny metal ball in space, but of what could be done with it that we didn't know. Apparently, in the US especially, the tension could be cut with a knife as people waited for Judgement Day to begin... which of course it didn't. The Cold War stayed, well, pretty darn cold. But it highlighted the fear - the fear of the unknown and what someone else, someone strange, could do with it. The US was terrified of what this new technology they had so abysmally failed to develop could do to them.

Fast forward nearly 50 years, and we have Google Street View - nowhere near as technologically important, but, you know, WAY cooler. Of course. What is it? If you're a nerd, they're just geotagged photos hashed together. This is fairly trifling to those in the GIS industry, as it has been going on for decades, but in the last few years it has been encroaching on the general population, and Street View has really set the nation on fire! Now, of course, there are two amusing things about this, firstly, Street View has been in the US for aaaaages, so if anyone has been hiding under a rock and didn't know it was on its way, well, tough tits, and secondly, the UK has nearly 4.5 million CCTV cameras which monitor us every single day of our lives, so having a one-off picture the front of your house (and not even every house - Street View doesn't do cul-de-sacs) is hardly terrifying.

But oh no! Reports this morning in the Guardian told us that people were willing to form a human barrier and risk looking like complete idiots over fear of what someone might do with something they don't understand. Paul Jacobs, the panic-monger responsible for this laughable act of idiocy, was quoted as saying, "If our houses are plastered all over Google, it's an invitation for more criminals to strike.".

Yes. Like the fact that any potential thief living or travelling near the village wouldn't already know that this village is the very definition of upper middle class (the houses have tennis courts and pools in the back garden). Jacobs also mentioned, as part of his argument for his stupidity, that there had been three burglaries in the last six weeks. Where? In his living room? Or in the whole village? In case you haven't noticed, Mr Jacobs, there is a recession going on - lots of people getting a bit shirty and a bit desperate. PLEASE try to recognise that you might buy your land, but it still belongs to this earth, as does the rest of humanity, to which you in turn belong. Stop whining because someone might possibly see that your door could do with a lick of paint and you hadn't bothered to polish your Porsche Boxter this week, or even, gadzooks, that you hire a gardner to landscape instead of doing it yourself (labour is the new hired help).

Sigh. I realise I drifted into a 'we are the world' argument just there, but seriously, come on. If you have that kind of 'invasion of privacy' things about someone taking a photograph and putting it up online, then go live in a bunker, because *I* for one, want to be nosy and see what people's hanging baskets are looking like (or were looking like, last year!).

Hugs,

Jen