Wednesday 12th April 2006

Board up the windows, let the washing pile up and the sock drawer go unsorted, for I have found me a brand new distraction greater than all of these things combined and will keep me from my work for far, far longer. Also, just like the distracting internet, this is also right in front of me on my computer, and has been available to people for a while, but only Apple Mac users very recently. I discovered it today and it threatens to ruin everything, it’s called Google Earth and it’s the high priest, daddy, evil overlord, big boss man, and undisputed champion of time wasting gadgets.

It’s probably very old news to everyone, indeed even a luddite like myself knew about it over a year ago, but as I say us artistic Mac users have been denied it up until now. They probably assumed we were all too busy editing rubbish films or designing websites for our arty mates to bother with it.

It’s an online application that you install into your computer and then use via a broadband internet connection that allows you to roam the Earth at will, using detailed satellite images. You can go to Rio and zoom down onto Copacabana Beach, in enough detail to see little sun worshipers lying about, and then either type in your next destination – or do it manually and pretend you’re working for the CIA – and have a look at something else. I’ve so far been to my house, naturally, had a look at Moscow, Tokyo, the pyramids, Sydney, the Grand Canyon, L.A, New York, Fiji, Madagascar, London… It’s equally fascinating and pointless, the two vital ingredients of a good time waster.

What’s great about it is the way it’s designed as pure entertainment. It’s not got any real practical value. So instead of being designed to pin-point things in an instant (it does allow you to search for street names and go straight there though) it works better as a sort of game, and the interface is designed for you to enjoy yourself. The game I play is think of a building in the world, say the Empire State building, and then challenge myself to zoom right down onto the top of it without using any directional guides. I know, I’ve already invented a game for this time wasting monolith – it’s all over.

The cities have far greater detail than rural areas. You can’t focus on a tree in a field in Hampshire like you can the London Eye on the bank of the Thames. I suppose this is just to make the programme a manageable size to download (it’s still big) because surely our lovely governments have photographed the globe in immense detail already without deciding to leave the countryside untouched by their orbiting eyes, but there’ll come a day soon when we’ll be able to scan even rural Mongolia to see how many sheep are in any given field.

Even now you can have a look through the streets of Moscow, changing your viewing angle, changing how quickly you fly over the surface, and get the feeling that you really shouldn’t be doing it, as if the Cold War is still very alive and well. It’s the sort of technology I don’t even know existed to our spies in the 70’s and 80’s, and yet we can now do it in our living rooms. Which makes you wonder how Government technology has moved on? Can’t they get down to any square inch of ground from space now? How soon until we can do the same?

I can’t think that Google Earth wouldn’t be fascinating to anyone, but if you like travel it’s all the more addictive. You can zip from New York to St Petersburg in seconds, then directly to Lima. It makes you hanker for an empty and endless credit card and a few years off. But given the opportunity, this application has proven to me I don’t know where I’d start. I’m never sure to start even when using it as a virtual traveller. Tokyo, yes. Tallinn, yes. Rio, yes. But that’s just cities, and you tend to think of the world in terms of airport destinations these days, as opposed to the rest of it that would still take a bit of effort to see. I think it would be impossible to individually draw up a Top Five Things To See Before You Die list, wouldn’t it?

Not for some people, granted, because some people have hopelessly small horizons. “I’d like to see Blackpool Tower one more time before I go.�

“Not the Great Wall of China then?�

“Eee, no. Just get me a little stick of Blackpool rock and set me on a donkey and�

“Shut up.�

The other facility of the programme is that you can zoom far enough out to see the Earth as an entire planet, and then look at it from different angles. It’s strange how our own world, the only one we’ve ever known, is quite unrecognisable is you look at it from any other way than having the Artic at the top and the Antarctic at the bottom. Nothing seems right. If you were approaching in some futuristic taxi in the year 3012 and you didn’t approach the planet in exactly the right way, you’d either say “I’ve no idea which bit’s mine, mate… Hang on, maybe if I put my head to the side like this… No. Is that Russia? Right, well in that case… No� or you’d say “I said Earth you Martian taxi idiot. This is all wrong.�

So if you’ve not been to Google Earth before then decide whether you want to get any work done ever again and then make the decision to click here or not. Don’t make it lightly though, it’s powers are dark. Dark I say.

• Post to:
•  del.icio.us
•  Digg
•  Newsvine
•  Nowpublic
•  Reddit