Bibliography

1. Associated Press. "House Panel: Why did Google 'Airbrush History?'www.cnn.com 31 April 2007: http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/03/31/katrina.google.maps.ap/index.html

2. Gleitman, Henry, Daniel Reisberg, James Gross. Psychology. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2007.

3. Johnson, Jenna. "Google's View of D.C. Melds New and Sharp, Old and Fuzzy." Washington Post.com 22 July 2007: 1-2, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/21/AR2007072101296

Google Maps

An unknown author once said that "you'll learn more about a road by traveling it than by consulting all the maps in the world". With the emergence of digital technology, this quote's accuracy is slowly disintegrating. Google Maps, using satellite images, panoramic views from street level, and complex road maps complete with traffic updates and labeled businesses is freely available via the internet. Google Maps offers such a wide array of capabilities, that one almost feels as if they were being offered a seat at a godlike throne, with the ability to be everywhere all at once. The truth is that there is great disparity between the simulation of Google Maps' view and the perspective of omnipotent deities. While Google Maps allows one the freedom to see nearly anywhere in the world, its pictures are like glancing at a starlit sky and seeing the stars as they were years ago. However, unlike stars, there is no way to calculate how old Google Maps views actually are. What Google Maps does, is ultimately allow us the freedom to see a patchwork world of cities and streets at certain points in time mismatched together to form a warped jigsaw puzzle of a planet, which forces us to confront our own inability to grasp reality as a coherent whole.

Predecessors

While maps may be the obvious predecessor to Google Maps, there are numerous traditional forms of media from which it draws. It incorporates some features of TV news programs, phone books, and photography. By incorporating these features, Google Maps wields the power of each and new capabilities due to the merger. For instance, if you would like to find a five star restaurant among the convoluted streets of some foreign city, Google Maps can give you the addresses of all the five star restaurants in the area, the quickest way there, the exact distance of the trip, a view of the restaurant, and even a link to the restaurant's website. Though these features are fantastic, there are many of the limitations of earlier media. For instance, a company must be in Google's database to be located in the same way that companies must pay to be in the yellow pages.

Freedoms

Google offers freedom as a result of this incorporation of different media formats. One can almost imagine being able to fly anywhere in the world in nanoseconds when first accessing the interface of Google Maps. It shows high resolution satellite images of the entire United States and various other countries. Indeed there is something childishly empowering in zooming around the world at super-hero speeds, and the views of cities from street level are remarkably complete. I was even able to "drive" through a cemetery in Juneau. Google also allows customization of maps, through its my maps feature, and minor changes in most addresses' locations can be made without approval from the administrator.

Limitations

That being said, Google Maps limitations are numerous and significant. Its portrayal of the places it is supposed to represent is first of all limited like any two-dimensional map. The use of a Mercator Projection to account for this, causes a distortion of the poles. Secondly, not all of Google's maps always match up. Sometimes when the road map is placed over the satellite images in hybrid mode, the two are out of sync. Furthermore, Google's photos can be years old and even purposely wrong. The White House and other government facility's photos are deliberately outdated (Johnson 1), and the photos of New Orleans post-Katrina, were taken down in favor of images prior to the hurricane (Associated Press 1). Google therefore not only distorts our world as a result of flaws in their ability to collect data and the imperfection of the interface, but also in order to obey governmental mandates. Google also only offers very broad photos of many parts of the world, that is the high definition available in America, shows only an error in remoter places.

The Significance of Limitations

Earlier I called these limitations significant; I meant this, not in the way that they disable the day to day use of Google Maps' features, but in the way they cast light on our own distortion of reality. Because places are less populated or less economically well to do, or even simply because they are located nearer to the poles, Google deems them less important and offers them an inferior program. While this may be practical, it forces us to recognize our willingness to sacrifice equality for practicality. Additionally, the fact that Google Maps' photos are so disconnected from one another shows our minds' fragmentation of the world into borders between towns and countries and also between objects and moments, rather than seeing a continuum of time and space. Humans evolved to exaggerate borders. If they were an attacking animal, it helps to be able to discern it from the trees behind it. Our senses evolved to highlight difference rather than continuity known in psychology as parsing (Gleitman 164-168). While these gaps in our perception are not quite as obvious as Google Maps' blanks, there are gaps in the things we perceive using our senses and our memories, thus any dissatisfaction with Google Maps might be frustrations with our own incomplete realities.

Google Maps Universe

Google Maps offers us a view of a complex universe where certain places are more visible than others and two identical places can have different locations. In Google Maps' universe there are voids between distances and time is nonexistent. This is disturbingly similar to the human mind. We don't regard every distinct moment and space as a separate entity, but only as an amalgamation of discrete parts, our eyes see blocky approximations, not exact integrals. While there are changes that I would like to see in Google Map's abilities and in Google Inc.'s policies regarding national governments, I recognize Google Maps as a true digital masterpiece, in its depiction of our planet in its distorted entirety.