I love being tracked. I know people nowadays have concerns about the NSA snooping into their business and whatnot; civil liberties: blah blah blah; but I just look at all that as a sign that somebody somewhere cares. It’s comforting to me. I realize this attitude may come about as a result of negligent parenting, but I try not to dwell on the whos or whys too much.
I like that the banking institutions know where I go and where I’ve been. I enjoy Amazon’s purchasing recommendations when I click to buy or even look at something (hell, sometimes they’re even right!). Every advancement in data gathering technology brings me closer to my dream of living in a big bubble, like in “Logan’s Run.” Everything clean, with AC that never breaks down and nice clothes.
My dream future realm has a strong scheduling aspect, where activities for the day or even week are preplanned (or delivered to me, that might be even better, right?). It takes the doubt out of everyday existence. But as for all the Logan’s Run comparisons….I’ll take a pass on the euthanasia thing, thank you very much.
These views I hold explain my fascination with Google Earth and Google Maps. I love tapping in my old zip codes and seeing how my former residences are doing (even though the pics are usually a couple of years old). Like this one:
My old place on 85th St. Seattle
A virtual drive on Google Maps can really stoke the facility of memory. I remember where I’ve been (I remember that place!), where I’ve eaten (man, I can’t believe that place closed down!), and even things I’ve lost.
The other day I remembered a morning back in 1979 when I was playing Frisbee with my sister Laura at Hollywood High in LA. There was this circular structure that I remembered because I’d tossed our Frisbee up there, losing it for good despite my promise to her to come back for it. Well I finally looked for it a couple of days ago and I can say the sucker’s really lost. My bad, sis. I mean, I zoomed in as hard as I could.
I really searched this picture, but no.
My ‘former residence searches’ became kind of boring so I started looking for my car; kind of like a Where’s Waldo with a Ford Focus. Over the years I’ve seen it parked at a couple of places, including the apartment building pictured above (the pic is from WAY after I moved away). Other times I found it at a couple of PCC Natural Markets in Seattle.
The best pic yet is from here in Georgia, it’s zeroed in, very impressive. Here it is….boom!
Boom!
But….what about me? Wouldn’t it be cool if I found….me? Wouldn’t it be the ultimate (now now, don’t say creepy) validation?! It happened to my sister-in-law once, she was captured by the Google-Mobile, driving through Queens with it’s antenna proboscis extended. When she showed that to me I was so jealous!! Man!
Kathleen regarding her “feisty” neighbor.
Though the street view has since been updated (the people and the flowers are gone-some update!); Kathleen really made hay out of this one. It even made her own site magicksandwich.com. Well, one day, bored (and I swear I wasn’t even spending a couple of hours looking for myself), I was just looking at the park where I often take long walks, meandering you know. Honest!
Imagine my unalloyed joy when I saw this:
Yeah, that little guy in the middle, that guy’s me! Wait a sec, let me zoom in:
I exist!
That’s better, but maybe you still just have to take my word for it. It is my unmistakable “Bigfoot 70’s film” walk. After I zoomed in on that photo I jumped out of my chair and quickly emailed the pic back to my sister-in-law. She thought it was cool – but to me; well, I had visions of (so called) dystopic sci-fi fantasies running through my head. Domed cities and multicolored muumuus can’t be far behind!
Now, what’s next?
UPDATE: Here’s what’s next, now my sister has been added to our Google portfolio! It’s better than mine, in fact this one is the best yet; her and her partner Lynn are in it and they (the folks at Google) blurred their faces out but you can tell my sister is waving to the Google car. It seems odd to me that they didn’t blur the dog’s face out, she’s looking at the camera too. Just wait, one day soon there will be a privacy protection law enacted involving images of dog’s faces on search engines. This is America: where dogs are people too! If Google Maps keeps up like this, adding family members like this; then I’ll have to keep adding them here and this post will truly metastasize.
The thing my photo has going for it is that I’m not in front of my house. But it’s not the best one anymore. Something about Ripley the dog just gazing at the camera just clinches it for sister Laura. Bravo! I think she got her to look, we can competitive like that.
Maybe next time the GoogleMobile comes around I’ll be washing my car in my driveway while giving the Google camera a salute. That would top them all, or better yet, I’ll be spinning around in Carousel, though if I really was in the Logan’s Run world I’d be a decade and a half past my expiration date.
