Social Media and the Collective Visual Memory, Part 2
December 3, 2007 at 10:05 am by ChrisIn my last post, I mentioned how Microsoft is utilizing existing communities and social momentum for the purpose of gathering and organizing information, specifically within their Photosynth project. Blaise Aguera y Arcas mentioned in his comments that one could think of Photosynth as "the long tail of Steve Lawler's Virtual Earth" in that it constructed its view from an aggregate of thousands of individual users' images, rather than relying on a centrally created dataset (from vehicles and cameras specifically charged with gathering images). While I marvel at the ingenuity of this, and do consider what they are doing to be a potentially positive advance in technology, I also have some reservations.
As I watched Steve Lawler's demonstration of Virtual Earth, I immediately thought of a computer game I used to play as a kid. In Civilization 2, you start a civilization from the ground up, relying upon knowledge, resources, and warfare to grow and advance. One interesting aspect of the game is that your map, which represents the world as your civilization knows it, will be black in the areas of the globe that you have not yet explored. However, the first civilization to send up the space shuttle will also be the first to return with satellite images of the globe- a major advantage in that they allow you to see your opponents' infrastructure and armies down to the last detail, without having to physically travel to their territory. In this case, the advance in technology leads to a significant strategic advance as well.It seems to me that the same principle applies to the advances we are making today in online visualization technology. If we have the ability to digitally recreate an entire city down to the last detail by aggregating digital photos uploaded across the internet, as well as satellite and vehicle photography, providing what is essentially a detailed map of our infrastructure available online, should we do it? The question reminds me of my first reaction to Google's Street View, which was general unease (If you are unfamiliar with Street View, see the YouTube video below). I did not feel very comfortable with the idea that I could zoom in on a support beam of a highway overpass right near JFK airport, or even situate myself at the airport's front door and get a pretty good idea of the entrances and exits. Couldn't this information be very helpful to a terrorist organization? In a way, I'm starting to feel like we've come back with those first satellite pictures of the globe and just given them away to the world- even to those that we know we cannot trust, perhaps because our achievements have us illegitimately convinced that we are unparalleled in our genius, and untouchable worldwide. |
Tags: social-media user-interface-design software tagging
 |  |  |  |  |  |
