Thought-Factory.net Philosophical Conversations Public Opinion philosophy.com Junk for code
PortElliot2.jpg
'An aphorism, properly stamped and molded, has not been "deciphered" when it has simply been read; rather one has then to begin its interpretation, for which is required an art of interpretation.' -- Nietzsche, 'On the Genealogy of Morals'
RECENT ENTRIES
SEARCH
ARCHIVES
Weblog Links
Library
Fields
Philosophers
Writers
Connections
Magazines
E-Resources
Academics
Other
www.thought-factory.net
'An aphorism, properly stamped and molded, has not been "deciphered" when it has simply been read; rather one has then to begin its interpretation, for which is required an art of interpretation.' -- Nietzsche, 'On the Genealogy of Morals'

Jon Rafman + Google Street View « Previous | |Next »
July 16, 2012

In 2007, Google released Google Street View, in which a computer user could access a virtual panoramic image of many streets in the world. Jon Rafman curates images from the Google Street View all-seeing machine. Rafman hunts through Google Street View pictures and accesses notable, jarring moments.

In this interview the Canadian photographic artist Jon Rafman says:

People often ask me what the future is going to look like… I’m not really sure why… maybe simply because I work with new technologies.In the past we relied on dystopian and utopian views of the future. The future was thought of as fundamentally different from the present. Today, there is a sense that the future is going to be a lot more banal, that we are already living in the future (like with the phone that you are recording this conversation with), that the future is going to be more of the same… more apps and technologies that are designed to mediate and ‘improve’ our experience of reality. It is essentially a more Facebook-like future. This is very different from the early Internet, which was more like an exploration of a vast unknown territory.

Rafman takes screen shots of images culled from Google’s huge digital compendium of worldwide street scenes, and he runs a Tumblr blog that periodically adds new photos found.

Two years ago, Google sent out an army of hybrid electric automobiles, each one bearing nine cameras on a single pole. Armed with a GPS and three laser range scanners, this fleet of cars began an endless quest to photograph every highway and byway in the free world.

| Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 7:57 PM |