The eyes… they never close…

Mike - 1:26pm on Thursday August 21st 2008

Ambling back to LXF Towers this sunny lunchtime, I came across a sinister black car with a tripod on the roof. That tripod was holding eight cameras for a 360 degree view. Now, this isn't the sort of thing you normally see in Bath, but as I got closer to the car, I saw a logo on the side. The logo of information. Google.

Yep, it was Google's street view cameramobile, buzzing around the city and capturing the common sights of Bath: glorious architecture, plodding tourists and ciderspace-dwelling vagrants. Now, I like Google and use many of the company's services. But there was something strange about seeing the Google car -- it was like the internet had spawned a machine whose sole job is to consume data. And it won't stop at anything.

When we think about the internet, it's just a 'series of tubes' and everything is so distant and intangible. You can argue with people and receive death threats for your choice of distro, but ultimately it's all just larks and capers over TCP/IP. With the Google car, however, you can actually see the internet in the flesh, so to speak. It's there -- it's indexing your street, spidering your existence, and you can't shout out a robots.txt file to stop it.

So, readers, are you scared? What will you do if you see the car?

Your comments

What would I do? I guess

Paul (not verified) - August 21, 2008 @ 2:40pm

What would I do? I guess it'd depend on what I was doing at the time...and who with! ;)

It didn't have anything ominous like T1000 on it did it? I can visualise the sequences in the Terminator movies where various vehicles are zapping seven bells out of humanity.

I might be more worried if

Rhakios (not verified) - August 21, 2008 @ 4:55pm

I might be more worried if they had black helicopters.But then, who is to say that they don't? :shock:

Oh that was what that

towy71 (not verified) - August 21, 2008 @ 8:18pm

Oh that was what that helicopter over my house was doing :shock:

Well theyll never come where

person-a (not verified) - August 22, 2008 @ 8:24pm

Well theyll never come where I live...

Creepy... Maybe it's the

Troy M (not verified) - August 23, 2008 @ 3:35am

Creepy... Maybe it's the British secret service disguised as a Google truck!

BTW Mike, I can't seem to email you, it says delivery failure. I don't suppose you changed your email?

What I would like to know is

mrlocal (not verified) - August 23, 2008 @ 10:19pm

What I would like to know is how one scores a job driving one of these vehicles? Seems like a cushy number. Anyhow, I'm too late, my area has long been scanned, according to various seasonal pointers in the images. It was a bright sunny day when the vehicle passed here and lo! there is my house sticking out like a canine's scrotal sac.

Scanned our industrial

leo maxwell (not verified) - August 24, 2008 @ 10:25pm

Scanned our industrial estate on Friday afternoon. extremely odd feeling, saw ita at the macdonalds carpark earlier, so they are actually scanning every road available.

Google it! ;D

linuxfanatik (not verified) - August 25, 2008 @ 8:08pm

Where I live anyone taking

Alex Higgins (not verified) - August 26, 2008 @ 8:52am

Where I live anyone taking such pictures would probably be subject to a swift beating followed by the theft of their equipment and transportation. They are a brave bunch :)

I would have to get my

Tom Mann (not verified) - August 27, 2008 @ 10:11pm

I would have to get my 'robots.txt' out on their virtualreality (ie place Wrigley spearmint gum on the camera)

>> canine’s scrotal

steogede (not verified) - August 28, 2008 @ 10:42am

&gt;&gt; canine’s scrotal sac.

so you live in a chien-de-sac or would it be sac-du-chien (never was much good a french)? Probably no worse than living in a cul-de-sac given than cul = ass.

# steogede Says: cul-de-sac

towy71 (not verified) - August 28, 2008 @ 8:35pm

# steogede Says:
cul-de-sac given than cul = ass.

err no, cul means bottom so it translates as "bottom of the sack"

[url]http://www.thefreedictionary.com/cul-de-sac[/url]

Actually, cul is used as

leo maxwell (not verified) - August 31, 2008 @ 9:22am

Actually, cul is used as bottom in both meanings:
http://www.alternative-dictionaries.net/dictionary/French/entry/cul

And it would be sac-de-chein

10000 pedant points :)

Deduct pedant points leo,

mrlocal (not verified) - August 31, 2008 @ 8:30pm

Deduct pedant points leo, poor spelling: "chien" is the correct form and where the hell are we going with this thread?

Oops, typo, not spelling

leo maxwell (not verified) - September 1, 2008 @ 12:45pm

Oops, typo, not spelling mistake.

And that "alternative dictionary" site is quite interesting, if only to demonstrate that bad language is very different in different languages.

>> cul = ass And what

Rhakios (not verified) - September 3, 2008 @ 5:42pm

&gt;&gt; cul = ass

And what have donkeys got to do with it? :?

Quite a bit I think,

mrlocal (not verified) - September 3, 2008 @ 10:04pm

Quite a bit I think, Rhakios. Just to refresh my memory, I reread the blog to remind myself of the original question (an old habit from school exams 40 years ago). Mike did not mention exactly what he did upon sighting said vehicle. Mike?

He got on his donkey?

Rhakios (not verified) - September 4, 2008 @ 4:43pm

Perhaps he did but I would

mrlocal (not verified) - September 4, 2008 @ 9:34pm

Perhaps he did but I would like to hear the man himself confirm if that were the case.
Come to think of it, a chap on a donkey in beautiful Bath would make an interesting addition to Streetview.

Fraid I didn't do anything

Mike Saunders (not verified) - September 10, 2008 @ 8:54am

Fraid I didn't do anything except walk closer and look puzzled!