PresentTense/Shane Hegarty:In his Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy books, Douglas Adams invented a torture device called the Total Perspective Vortex, in which the victim is shown the mind-boggling entirety of all creation complete with the most microscopic of dots, telling them "You Are Here".
Finding their place in the universe to be so crushingly meaningless drives them quite mad. It seemed a brilliantly plausible way of crushing any ego. Pre-Colin Farrell, at least.
A year ago this week, Google released what is the closest we've come to inventing an actual Total Perspective Vortex. Google Earth is a free-to-download view of the planet, made up of aerial and satellite photography allowing the user to zoom into a picture of almost any place they want. Most people, of course, go straight to their own house. After which they'll have a gawk at their neighbours', perhaps to make a disparaging remark about their flower beds or the state of their roof.
And then they'll swoosh out of there and over to Old Trafford or a North Korean nuclear facility or the Grand Canyon or wherever they please. Perhaps to see the streets of New York, (so clear you can see people waiting at pedestrian crossings), to forest fires in South America and to hippos wallowing in African mud. It's far from tortuous, obviously, but as you fly around like a virtual Superman it's hard to avoid the disconcerting thought that you are nothing but a blurred, uninteresting pixel somewhere among the many millions that make up Google Earth. That nobody is interested in zooming in on your three-bed semi. Except for the neighbours.
Some areas are sharper than others, and the edges of your home town can suddenly disappear into a vast smudge. And given that Google has a headquarters in Dublin, perhaps it's no surprise that the capital is visible in glorious detail, while large chunks of the country look like someone's spilled milk all over it.
What makes Google Earth so wonderful, though, is that it is a fine marriage of the two motivations that have driven humanity forward over the millennia: the urge to acquire great knowledge; and the urge to waste as much time as possible while doing it.
It is immensely compelling. Too compelling, according to some governments who would rather not have high-resolution pictures of their military bases available to any budding terrorist with a home computer. All the images, a mix of satellite and aerial photography, have been taken within the last three years, so the information is relatively up to date. India has complained about this, as has South Korea. Dick Cheney's home was mysteriously smudged, even though locals could gawk at it while cycling past the front gate. For the paranoid, Google Earth was an unwelcome intrusion, akin to having built a giant fence to block out the nosy neighbours, only to look up and find them hovering above having hitched a ride on the Goodyear blimp.
During its first year year, it has spawned many noble pursuits. For instance, aid agencies have found it a handy resource for post-disaster planning. An Italian computer programmer discovered the remains of an ancient Roman villa that had somehow been overlooked by earthbound archaeologists. Another user was reported to have discovered a meteor crater in Chad. (An old one of course, not one that was still singed and smoking.)
But Google Earth is a time-waster's paradise. Osama might start off hunting down nuclear power stations, but he'll soon be looking at the images of his neighbour's cave and sniffing at the untidy state of his arms dump. And after that, like the millions who have downloaded it, he would probably waste endless hours on the trivial.
There are online treasure hunts. Games of "guess the chunk of coastline". People hunt for the unusual, such as an airline refuelling mid-air, or crop circles and shipwrecks. Its sister site, Google Maps, has allowed for a less edifying game in which the public can can put a little arrow for where you last spotted a celebrity. (Wednesday at 4pm: "Jamie Lee Curtis walked into Barney's CoOp Soho, forgetting to say thank you to three Japanese tourists who held the door for her . . .".)
As much as its present, Google Earth's future omniscience is a vein of rich speculation. There is the notion that some day it may be available in real time. Forget about the terrorists - burglars would find it a delightful resource for seeing who's at home; suspicious spouses would save on private investigator fees; bosses taking a call from a "sick" employee will be able to zoom straight over the local golf course for confirmation.
More pressing is how, in 2007, pictures will be taken that are so sharp you'll be able to count the manholes. Objects of 1.3 metres will become visible, which sounds fairly innocuous until you realise that this is smaller than the average human.
You may be but a speck among the vastness of Google Earth, but if you decide on a spot of nude sunbathing on the day a satellite is flying over, you'll suddenly find your back garden to be a very popular place indeed.