Open up Google Maps and search for 8 Sampsonia Way, Pittsburgh, PA. This is one of the funniest things I’ve seen on Google Maps. There was an old picture of the 318 offices, which showed me going over the fence one day when I locked my keys in the office that I thought was funny (because it was me mostly), but this is way better – and it got me to thinking about what else people have come across that Google has captured in action.
Another that my wife mentioned to me is Liam Gallagher, frontman from Oasis, outside his favorite pub (he denies this is him btw). There are also some scantily clad women in Paris, a woman flashing the camera (now taken down) and a guy with his bum hangin’ out of his pants. Then there’s the guy getting carted off to jail (imagine trying to get out of that one) and of course, a guy picking up someone who is reportedly a prostitute.
I guess the take away from all this is that you just shouldn’t do anything in public that you don’t want plastered onto Google Maps. While Street View is called, by some critics, an affront to privacy, I think it’s great. There are a multitude of pictures of men going into strip clubs, people getting into fights and even people taking a crap on the street. Would people behave as badly in public as they often do if they knew there was a very, very small chance that a Google car would happen to be driving by at that very moment and catch them in the act. Not that some of these things I mentioned are behaving badly according to some cultural norms (although I’m pretty sure that dropping a big duke in the street is pretty much globally frowned upon). Which brings up my final point – in an increasingly globalized world, there are just some things (like sun bathing nude – also caught by the cameras) that are perfectly kosher in other societies that, while they may offend, are not OK in other parts of the world. There’s nothing new about it, but every day it gets even closer to real time.