It was going to come to this: I'm looking at Google Maps, with its customary grid and satellite views. Now, there's a new feature called "street view."
There is my house, as clear as it gets here on the clearest of days. And, out front, is that...? Yes, that is my car, parked in front. I showed this to the kids, and Julia (8) was shocked.
"Wait, Dad, if I run out front will we be able to see me?"
Not quite yet, but as this technology unfolds, it's easy to imagine a future time when we will be able to zoom in anywhere, in real time, and see anything, or anybody.
This, of course, is beyond spooky -- a word carefully chosen, for until recently only spooks had access to this kind of imagery. Slowly but surely, however, technologies developed by U.S. military intelligence agencies (like the super-secret NRO), are migrating into the commercial sphere.
What we get, of course (and pardon my gross reference here) is only "sloppy seconds." We can be assured that if I can access a mapping software program and drill down to look at a particular building on a certain street and see what car is parked there, that the spooks are so far ahead of us that this stuff is now considered child's play.
What do I think U.S. surveillance technology is capable of today? It's just a hunch, but with advanced Infrared imaging, GPS, listening technologies, interlinked databases, face recognition, voice recognition, and global mapping technologies, among many others, I strongly suspect there are rooms where analysts watch anybody "of interest" in real time, day after day, and night after night.
Until the order comes to take them out.
I assume that the caves of Tora Bora, for example, can be constantly monitored, night and day, in order to determine who comes and who goes. It's already trivial to monitor any cell phone conversation anywhere in the world. It won't be long before a "person of interest" will not be able to move without triggering an electronic signal to those who want to track his/her actions.
I'm hardly an expert in surveillance technology, although ~28 years ago, with John Markoff and Michael Singer, I co-wrote a long series about the coming age of electronic snooping. I remember the demos that proud entrepreneurs in that era's Silicon Valley showed us -- of tiny microphones that could pick up conversations through glass windows, for example -- and wondering how much longer our traditional (American) sense of privacy could possibly survive.
You might think, as an investigative reporter, that I would have welcomed the opportunity to snoop on the bad guys we were following. But quite honestly, this aspect of the technological revolution sickened me. I grew up in a time and a place where I could run off through the cornfields and the woods and do whatever I wanted to do, without fear that anyone would catch me at it.
Not that I was doing anything all that scandalous, mind you, mainly inventing a world of interconnected trails and circles in the corn, and a world of tracking rabbits in the wood. Maybe I placed a penny or two on the train tracks in the hope that the daily train might yield me a mangled souvenir; and quite possibly I practiced shooting bottles perched on rocks with my trusty 16-gauge shotgun.
Once or twice I might have smoked a cigarette (yuck, hated it) or sucked on my own corncob pipe. Maybe, if I wandered to where they was a waterhole, I might have gone skinny-dipping. It's conceivable, when I was a bit older, that I smoked some dope or made love to my girlfriend, somewhere there, out in the open, someplace far away, long ago, but I really don't remember now.
But, whatever I may or may not have done, here, there, or anywhere, I'm quite sure I felt safe that no one could see me doing it or not doing it, comprende?.
Now think about our brave new world. If I am right, and invasive technologies have reached the point they logically should have, an intelligent agent could conceivably look right through your walls, purportedly to make sure you were not indulging in some sort of nefarious activity deemed to be against the interests of the Empire; oops, sorry, the nation.
The land of the free and the home of the brave. The place that celebrates the rugged individualist, unless of course, he turns out to be gay. (Reference: Brokeback Mountain.)
I believe we may be entering an era where most violent crimes may be able to be solved. It seems odd, in fact, that in high-murder areas like Newark or Oakland, the police still do not have videos of most of the street killings that occur, after all, outside, often in full daylight, on the same corners again and again.
Hell, maybe if I mastered Google Maps, I could solve these endless killings! Google's corporate philosophy is to do no harm. How about doing some good? That's my plea to Google. You guys are taking over the technology world you operate in. It's time you started asking how you might turn your power to good.
Believe me, those of us stuck out here in the physical reality of crime, poverty, violence and despair need you!
***
My own love-hate relationship with technology could probably not be better captured than in the joy I feel when introducing my children to seemingly miraculous developments of a positive nature. Thus, tonight, celebrating their oldest sister's birthday, my youngest children had their first experience on Skype.
In case this service has somehow eluded you, listen up. You can talk to anyone, anywhere in the world, for as long as you wish, for free. Simply download Skype and start talking.
I sound like an advertisement. But at this point I don't even have any long-distance telephone service, and my cell phone provider seems to find new ways to screw me whenever I talk to somebody in a distant place on that unit.
But, with Skype, my three youngest and I talked to my oldest in Chile (and briefly, to my second oldest, in Portland, via conference calling) for a long time and it cost absolutely nothing.
***
The photo at the top of this post is an enigma. It is an earring, and it looks to have been lost some time ago. Despite my weak photographic skills, this item looks better in my photo than in reality.
For some reason I love this photo. Maybe because I want to know its story. Who lost this earring here and when and why? Sharp-eyed Julia found it on our property on Memorial Day. I've asked some of the usual suspects, but so far its owner remains mysterious.
I would love to reconnect it with its rightful owner.
After all, I have the photograph, and in this new digital world of ours, that never need be lost, no matter what. That's where the art resides. What is lacking is the backstory...
-30-
No comments:
Post a Comment