03/08/08

Somehow my google map had plunked down on the north side of 
Indianapolis, not quite where I had intended to go.

"Hmm, this must be Carmel municipal airport, and there's the radio 
tower. So if I just follow the river down.. and there's the bridge!"

But I had scrolled too far; it wasn't the right bridge. There was the
football stadium of an unfamiliar high school nearby. I zoomed in for 
a closer look, trying to read the white-on-orange block letters in the 
end-zone astroturf, but the aerial resolution wasn't good enough.
I noticed a ground view was available so I clicked on it.

The ground view wasn't one of the usual robotic mapping surveys, but 
rather the raw footage of a news interview with a cheerleader at one of 
the football games. And strangely enough, I recognized her. Coincidence? 
More likely it was google's targeted experience locator fooling with my 
cookies again. The cheerleader was Darby Kennerly, one of those people 
who I feel I could have been friends with if only I had gotten to know 
her better. But with thousands of students in a graduating class there 
were only so many people you ever actually met.

As the unseen cameraman bobbled along, I tilted my head sideways to read 
the lettering on the ground, but it was unnecessary because the video 
data had already been mapped with aerial parallax to the local sketchup 
models. I could plainly see the home team marked on the reconstructed 
scoreboard, "Concession". What a weird name for a high school.

The interviewer had gone on to a football player and I began to 
lose interest. 

"Hey I found one of the new localized archival footage views." I said to 
nobody in particular.

I turned around in my seat to look at my three friends sitting on the 
plastic couch behind me; boy, girl, boy. Sarah was the only one 
watching.

"Didier Theroux says that in a couple of years google is going to go out 
and fill in the gaps in their archival coverage. He calls it 'The Google 
Project' with a capitalized Project. They're supposed to interview 
everyone on the planet about their life history and catalog it. Then 
they'll be able to search on all those brief romances that failed due to 
circumstance, and provide astrological compatability data to filter out 
the bad ones. Isn't that wild?" Her dark brown eyes sparkled with 
excitement.

"Sarah? I didn't know you were into science fiction." I returned to the 
screen to look up this 'Google Project'.

"It's not science fiction. He uses transcendental meditation to find an 
optimal road map for humanity. Then he tries to guide us with his books. 
But it's not easy maintaining serenity when you have a torrent of people 
banging on your inbox. He describes in his latest book how to hook the, 
uh, S-1 line up to..."

"A double pole double throw switch, yeah I know about it."