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Looking all over the world at home

She hasn't been there yet, but still Berna Cox thinks America needs a bit of work to bring it up to the mark — or at least that how she sees it on Google maps.

Last night, I stood at the base of the Eiffel Tower and gazed up at is pinnacle piercing the sky. Minutes later, I was standing outside the front door of my daughter’s flat in Edinburgh.

Shortly after that, I was strolling through Beverley Hills and watching the sun going down on the Santa Monica Boulevard.

My last port of call was Australia – a quick visit to Sydney Harbour and a stroll along the front on Bondi Beach. No – I haven’t suddenly acquired superpowers that allow me to don a cape and dodgy underpants and take to the skies. And no – I wasn’t asleep and dreaming it all. I was simply using the ‘street view’ function in Google Maps.

Quite spectacular

Google Maps is a free (for non-commercial use) web application offered by Google since 2005. Its earliest incarnation was, by today’s standards, quite basic in that it mostly provided traditional map views of various locations. Not long after its inception, though, it upgraded to include a satellite view which, depending on the quality of the images available, can be quite spectacular.

Two years ago, in May 2007, the ‘street view’ function was added, which initially only covered some urban areas of the USA. In 2008, parts of Europe were included and now, in 2009, a good portion of the USA, the major cities of Europe, Canada and Australia have been added, and the list is growing.

It is, therefore, possible for me to sit on my sofa in my little Laois home and take a world tour.

The street view images are incredibly detailed. It’s possible, for instance, to read names of businesses, read signage in shop windows, see passengers in cars. The images for street view are captured by a fleet of Google cars which drive around with a weird-looking camera thingy on the roof. It looks like a kind of periscope that captures a spherical image every 10 metres or so on the street from a height of about two metres.

The little ‘pegman’

When the user drags the little ‘pegman’ and positions him at a point on the street, they can do a complete 360 degree turnaround view and a 290 degree up-and-down view (there are probably very technical terms for this but they’re lost on me. Finding the little degree on the keyboard for degrees is as technical as I get).

It means, though, that you can ‘stand’ on the street and look all around you and look up at the skyline if you feel so inclined. It really is quite amazing technology.

But not everybody likes it. Since it was launched, the street view function has come in for a good deal of criticism. The level of detail in the street view images is such that some individuals and communities are up in arms about privacy issues. When street view launched in the UK this year, there was a bit of tut-tutting done about the fact that certain street view images showed a man leaving a sex shop; another man throwing up somewhere and another being arrested.

According to the BBC, in March of this year a Northern Ireland assembly member accused Google of being ‘reckless’ as the street view clearly showed cars’ registration numbers entering police stations and army barracks in Belfast (the only location on the island of Ireland currently with street view). Google had pledged that car registration numbers and human faces would be blurred but that failed to happen when street view was initially launched in the UK.

On public property

Despite the criticism, Google have continued to develop street view and plan to keep rolling it out. They reckon they’re doing nothing wrong – the images are captured on public property.

And higher authority agrees with them – last April, the Information Commissioner in the UK ruled that Google street view runs a small risk of privacy invasion, but should not be stopped. There is no law, they said, preventing a person from taking pictures in the street, as long as the person using the camera is not harassing others.

So street view continues to thrive and grow, but with its creators paying a little more attention to public concerns – faces are blurred, as are car registration numbers and they have complied with requests to remove images that might compromise security.
But there’s another aspect of street view that is, perhaps, considered less often.

Something, perhaps, that the tourist boards of the various countries should take into account. Here’s the thing...Google street view can seriously burst your bubble.

The land of dreams

If you’ve never been to a place, you form a mental image of it – most likely aided and abetted by how Hollywood chooses to present it. I have never been to the US, and have always told myself that some day I’ll go there. I’ve always thought of it as exciting and exotic. Big, bold and beautiful. The land of possibilities and dreams.
After spending way too much time ‘touring’ the US and dropping randomly into streets in various cities and towns, I’m completely disillusioned. As per the images presented to me on street view, the USA is dingy, dull and decidedly unlovely. Many, I’m sure, will disagree with that and that’s fine. The point is, though, that thanks to street view, that is now my impression of the USA. It’s no longer up there with the ‘things to do before I die’. It’s well and truly struck off the ‘bucket list’.

My virtual USA started out in a random way. I dropped in to a few major cities first and had a look around. New York didn’t impress me.

Whether it’s the quality of the camera capturing the images or the height of the buildings — I don’t know – but it seemed to be a dark and colourless place. I tried to excuse it by telling myself that the views are limited to what the Google car can capture. They can’t, for instance, provide images of pedestrian areas; therefore no close-up images of Central Park. But I made a beeline for the iconic images. For instance, I stood on the pavement outside the Empire State Building and looked up at it. It looks brown and boring.

Romantic locations

So I decided to choose more romantic locations. I started going to places that are mentioned in famous songs or movies. Using that guide, I visited San Jose, Tulsa, Providence, Winslow, Santa Monica Boulevard, Dallas, Las Vegas, Key Largo, San Francisco, Chattanooga, Nashville, Phoenix, New Orleans and many more besides. I then started to target small towns that I’d never heard of — working on the principle that there were probably little gems buried in that vast landscape.

Well, if there are, I didn’t find them. The smaller towns I randomly dropped in on looked dilapidated and dreary. The landscape is boring and the vegetation looks scrawny and unhealthy. Trash bags abound and everything looks like it needs a lick of paint.

And, with the exception of the very major cities, there are no people in evidence. The streets are largely deserted. A lot of the smaller towns look like ghost towns. Even some of the larger towns and cities seem to be lacking the hustle and bustle of humanity.

I stood outside Louis Vuitton on Rodeo Drive and there was hardly a soul in sight. It must have been an old-fashioned Good Friday when the Google car was there.

So the USA no longer calls me and it’s all down to the poor showing on street view. There is not one place I ‘visited’ that would inspire me to go there in reality. If I were CEO of the American equivalent of Bord Fáilte, I’d be mightily hacked off.

Australia, on the other hand, fared better. I’ve never been there either but it’s still on the list. With the exception of road works on the front along Bondi Beach, it looked nice. London too does well. It’s busy and bustling and looks clean and bright. I’ve been there several times and the street view is a true representation of the reality.
But God bless America – it needs work.

Posted in Travel on 25 May 2009
Tags: Berna Cox