Google’s Street View needs a conscience

(Engels)

Google has launched the Street View application in The Netherlands. This is another phase in Google’s mission to organise the world’s information by building a 3D-environment. Simon Davies, a surveillance watchdog, stated: “The cultural imperative within Google is anti-privacy”. From his perspective that is certainly the case, but then they probably would follow a different strategy (figure below).

Google's alternative anti-privacy strategy.

To regulate its content, Google uses a bottom-up approach of self-regulation. As Cherian George states on the bottom-up model: “[As] bloggers keep an eye over readers’ comments appended to their posts. Popular sites heavy with pictorial or video content, such as YouTube, have their own rules forbidding salacious material.(…) With the evolution of new technology, it is neither practical nor is there need for the state to play the role of a master moderator. (George)”

The bottom-up approach is very pragmatic in a sense that it is the only realistic way for regulation. Simply because, the effort to control its vast amount of ever changing content would be, in a top-down manner, an extremely labour intensive and costly practice. Even Google doesn’t have the resources to bring this into practice. So, Google uses a different strategy which is called: ‘flagging’ . The online Youtube community can get rid of inappropriate and sensitive video material by marking it as such.

The difference between YouTube’s approach and Google’s Street View approach, is the source which is generating the content. YouTube’s content is generated by its users, while Street View’ content is generated by its own apparatus. Because of the shear size of the content, regulation is mosty done by the user. From a psycho-analytical perspective, this relation between Street View and the user is rather disturbing, because the former lacks a proper conscience and the latter has to compensate this. So, when somebody stumbles upon a privacy sensitive image, he or she should be its conscience and flag it!

Google's imperative culture of anti-privacy?

Microsoft’s Photosynth also forms a 3D-environment, but it’s based on user generated content. Photo’s taken by individuals are uploaded to a server. Here, Photosynth takes over and stitches the photo’s, taken in the same location, together to form a 3D environment of that area. If everyone would upload their images, then, in time (like Google’s Street View), a whole 3D representation of the world could be created. Except, this world is created by the users, instead of a hegemonic company like Google. Even though, we would regulate that space bottom-up. I would rather regulate a world made by users, then by a corporation without a clear conscience.

an alternative 3D representation of the world