Cool or Scary? You Decide
What you see above is an image from a video the British Broadcasting Company put together using GPS and video imaging to track “the great migrations across our landscape.” The BBC took the GPS trails of taxis in London, freighters in the British Channel and planes flying in and out of Heathrow Airport, then superimposed their routes over composite images of different areas in England. The result? A beautiful pastiche of human travel and movement that’s both interesting and visually stunning. The network also stitched together the call patterns of England’s cell phone users down to the second, producing an image that looks like a blooming flower as London awakens.
It’s very cool, but also a bit weird. You know that GPS unit in your car that tells you how to get from downtown to that flower shop in the Marina you love? Or how about the cool, new GPS unit in your iPhone that let’s you see exactly how close you are to that obscure alley in Telegraph Hill you’re hunting for? If the BBC can do that, be sure the government can do a lot more. Not to fasten the tinfoil hat too tight, but there’s definitely a question here about what information companies and the government can use and what they do with it. It’s that way with all technologies, but the GPS phenomenon makes the argument a bit more real. After all, it’s about where you’re standing – right now.
A few years back, rapper Mos Def had the same thought:
Fourty percent of Americans own a cell phone
so they can hear everything that you say when you ain’t home
I guess, Michael Jackson was right, “You Are Not Alone”
With new technology, comes new problems. Stick around, this one will be with us for a while.