Saturday, June 02, 2007

The great eye sees all

Google is expanding on Amazon's imaging effort, using specially equipped vehicles to capture images of streets and homes. These now extend the reach of Google's sat maps. Sometimes the images reveal too much.

It is likely that at least one picture somewhere shows a man stepping through an open door while a spouse is away. It's only beginning. We've been seeing experimental gigapexel images for years -- a single image allows one to zoom from a cityscape to a window sill. Soon we'll have multiple 10-100 gpix images of cityscapes to compliment .1 gpix images of streets. [3]

We all know that job interviews and even business meetings start with Google searches, which is why my blog is lightly pseudonymous -- though in fact Google's backchaining logic exposes the relationship between the blog and my "true name" [1]. I can run, but I can't hide. [2]

Privacy is a luxury good now. It is available only to the rich and the lost. We have returned to the village from whence we came.

[1] Copyright Amazon.com
[2] On the one hand, I won't get any job offers from the GOP. On the other hand, I'm really quite a harmless sort so I enjoy the somewhat stunned looks I get at some business partner meetings.
[3] They are time slices of course, but they capture a lot instances across one time slice.

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