How easy is this to explore google maps? The program shows how WE ARE WATCHED, sooo comprehensively.
I started very simply with my address, my friend's address, then the way to my friend, then the satellite image of home. After that I was away, getting satellite images of a friend's home in West Palm Beach in Florida. I looked up the address of the library where my namesake in Halifax is doing the 23 things program.
I am simply overwhelmed and amazed at Google. As I reflected, I thought about the John Le Carre et al, books I read in the late 60s, early 70s and the spy/thriller films I have watched over the last 20 years. I took for granted the spying tools but now I see even I could do some spying a la Bourne Identity.
4 seconds max, and I am somewhere obscure in the world, another 2-3 seconds and I am looking at the actual residence: no need for myriad yellow stickers on pages of the street directories to mark the way to a place in an unknown suburb. Just a click, print and I have the journey mapped for me, here or in Siberia or West Palm Beach Florida.
I want to think about about how google can do this. It gives me a headache. I have read the story of the creation of google a few times. I can almost discern the logic the two "lads" used to work out how to create the search engine. Less than ten years later the search engine has all the places in the world tagged, and can show the way to a milk bar in Izmir (formerly Smyrna) in Turkey.
I often consult an atlas when I read, to show me the location of the book's setting. This was essential for my latest book - Louis de Berniere's "Birds without wings". With my new-found experience of google maps, I can hone in on all the places where the characters lived, or fought famine or their big and small wars and look at the spaces and travel routes used by them when travelling for business or more often, on forced marches to oblivion.
I have already lauded the google maps program to friends who have children and grandchildren in the US and UK. 23 things has expanded my knowledge, again.
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2 comments:
Yes - I was testing Wikipedia as part of the 23 things. I thought perhaps there is some techno pastry chef out there, entering relevant data on Wikipedia. I guess not!
Sadly, I couldn't find a city in the Ukraine, which I have been researching for years, there is no detail at all. However, with a son going to live in London soon, I have done his home and work research with amazing results, it's fantastic for that.
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