Round
Acid     The
Clock
Tuesday, July 19, 2005
Why Google Maps Sucks
source: Yahoo! Maps
posted: July 19, 2005, 12:01 PM
by: Rebecca Sunnybrook
Why is the title of this piece "Why Google Maps Sucks"?

The title of this piece is "Why Google Maps Sucks" because when you go to Google Maps and click on "Satellite", you get a satellite photo from 4 MONTHS AGO!

But I wanna go outside and wave my arms around and then immediately run back in and click on Google Maps and type in my address and click "satellite" and zoom in and see the top of my tiny head and my two tiny upturned palms.1

And I wanna do this at the same moment everyone else on earth is doing it too -- zooming in from the sky's eye-view of 7 continents till they see themselves (and the rest of man) standing on their own personal specks of earth all over the world, yearning to be free.

There's never been a world moment like this one will be. Never been anything so way far beyond the regular meaning of culture. Never been a time before in history when everyone on earth could so easily share the same stark highly personal, heavily communal realization SIMULTANEOUSLY.

Because, in the history of technology-sociology, it's one thing to see a live picture of Walter Cronkite saying "Hello dere from Rome!" live, from Rome.

But it's totally something else altogether to see yourself and every other living human on earth, standing on the surface of the planet, all together, ironically giving the moon or each other the finger, near-live from the Google Maps page.

Epilogue

So, Google Maps, get your damn act together and give us instantaneously updated satellite views of the planet, NOW.1

And could you get in just a few feet closer too, please?1

'Cause, at the very least, we should all be able to read what others have written in blood on scraps of paper they/we hold up to the sky.

------------

Notes:

1. And, if that's what Google Earth does, then... you know... nevermind.

permanent link to this article

copyright © 2005 by HC