Google Carol

Yesterday I downloaded “Google Earth” to our desktop computer. With our dial-up connection it's painfully slow, but if you're patient it works.

I started out by zooming from the earth view down to the west coast, then to Oregon and then on down to Waldport. After waiting for the blurry images to finish downloading and sharpen, I scrolled along the Alsea River and Highway towards our house. When I saw Eckman Lake sliding into view I realized that I'd gone too far, so after waiting for things to catch up I started backtracking.

When I thought that I recognized the empty, grassy lot across the street from our house I stopped and began zooming in. Sure enough, there was our house from above, I could even see our pickup parked in the driveway! I zoomed in even closer but things got pretty blurry and stayed that way.

I noticed an option called “Street View” so I put a check in the little check box and watched as the view morphed into ground level. The camera view was on the highway in front of our neighbor's house looking south.

I clicked on the arrows to rotate the scene and suddenly there was a picture of our neighbor, Fran walking up her driveway!

I went in to the kitchen and got Carol to show her what I'd found. “Go a Little further and see if you can see our house,” she said, leaning over my shoulder. I clicked my way down the highway a couple of notches and began rotating the camera view. “There's the driveway!” I said, “There's our mailbox! Holy crap! That looks like... it looks like...like you!”

As the fuzzy picture sharpened there was no doubt, and Carol pointed at her image. “Fran and I had been talking at the mailboxes, see, I've got the mail in my hand!.”

It's an amazing, wonderful technology, but more than a little bit spooky. Is Google the modern equivalent of Orwell's “Big Brother?”