Future Now
The IFTF Blog
Perceiving the Earth
New Scientist has an article speculating on the potential cultural impact of Google Earth.
[G]eographers and environmentalists are hoping that... [t]he release of Google Earth, a collection of bird's-eye photographs covering every inch of the planet... [will contribute to] revitalising the public's desire to preserve our beautiful but vulnerable planet.
"I think what Google has done could have the same kind of impact on people as the first images of Earth from the Apollo spacecraft," says Tim Haigh, a project manager at the European Environment Agency (EEA) in Copenhagen, Denmark....
Some think that just looking at these images will be enough to inspire people to care for the planet. Others think it is the ability to zoom in on anything, from the Egyptian pyramids or the Grand Canyon to their own neighbourhood, that will highlight the Earth's small size and vulnerability....
"The ability to zoom from the whole planet down to the home and backyard will help people make the connection between themselves and their planet," says Allen Carroll, chief cartographer at the National Geographic Society in Washington DC. "Google Earth will no doubt raise awareness about how small and precious our Earth is."
But Pascal Gilles, who heads the European Space Agency's CryoSat mission to monitor precise changes in the thickness of the polar ice sheets and floating sea ice and is based in Rome, Italy, says it is not enough just to make images available. "If we want to make people aware of the limited resources of the planet, we have to embed the information in an image," he says.
The EEA is already working on a "neighbourhood" project that will embed environmental reports, land use and air emissions data inside free online geographical images of all the European countries, and is scheduled to go live by 2008. The National Geographic Society will also release a free, zoomable 3D image of the Earth later this year, similar to Google Earth, and has plans to embed environmental information within it.
But in theory environmentalists could simply create overlays or embedded links to environmental information that connect to Google Earth. The search giant has released tools on the Google Earth site that allow data to be overlaid on top of or embedded inside its satellite images.
I'm skeptical that "Google Earth," or any particular technology can have much of an effect on the way people think about the Earth. However, I suspect Gilles is onto something: that Google Earth may prove to be a useful foundation or resource for groups that want to raise environmental IQs, demonstrate environmental change, or make clearer the interdependencies between different areas.
The claim that "The ability to zoom from the whole planet down to the home and backyard will help people make the connection between themselves and their planet" also strikes me as suspect, but a mistake with a useful point. I'd argue that for a generation that's grown up with Halo 2 and Age of Empires, the ability to zoom in and out of landscapes won't hold the kind of deeper meaning that it can for the pre-video game generation. For these kids, zooming around is useful visualization feature, not something that automatically teaches you deeper lessons about the fragility of your environment. As one commentator pointed out after Apple's new Mighty Mouse appeared, "We have a generation of kids who've grown up with GameBoys, PlayStation controllers, with text messaging on cell phones... [F]or them, a mouse with two buttons on the top, two buttons on the side and a scroll ball is easy to use.''
The point is that functionality can't be expected to translate smoothly into a specific intellectual outcome: some kids might play around with Google Earth and wonder where the "Fire" button is.