In a stroke of Alice Through the Looking Glass, I arrived in London after an overnight flight, took the Heathrow Express (fast train – 15 minutes from the airpor to central London), then switched to the tube (subway) for a short ride to my hotel. (JD Lasica was with me.) Arriving at the Barbican tube stop, which is where we emerge to walk two blocks to the hotel, I stepped out onto the street. This was my reaction (see video below) – didn’t know which was real, the real or the Google Earth (Google Street View, actually). Kind of deja vu because everything looked entirely familiar to me after having gone around the block many times on Google Street View to try to determine the best walking route to the hotel. You can tell from my excitement that it was a real revelation to discover that I could “go to a place” in the virtual world, use the virtual world to make decisions about a route, and then have it actually play out properly in real life. Amazing!
I got totally the same effect when staying in Mission back in April- I had used Google street view to plot a walkng route from the Mission and 16th BART to where I was staying on Shotwell and 15th, and every step of the way was totally familiar- the shops, houses, cars people, everything. I think we forget just how much of an area’s atmosphere, mood and vibe these street view images contain. I wonder if we could analyse them to create a mood layer on maps?
Now if only Google Street View would add smellovision we could smell the taco stand and the Mexican restaurants and that would give a heightened deja-vu to the experience!