THEIR EYES WERE WATCHING GOOGLE

Google maps We're becoming immune to the invasiveness of social-networking sites and the collapse of personal privacy. But this morning a friend sent me a link to something uniquely unnerving: StreetViewFun.

According to the site, StreetViewFun is a repository of "new funny and interesting Google Maps Street View photos". Heavily laden with Google advertising, it features stills of particular streets from Google maps (addresses are included), with the opportunity to vote on whether the photo is funny or cool. The stills capture people unawares, doing things they may not care to document.

At first I was alarmed. Wasn't this "America's Funniest Home Videos" meets Big Brother? But the site is more innocuous than that. A cursory surf yielded photographs of a couple canoodling on a shaded corner; some young boys flipping the middle finger; a man staring out behind a barred window. These serendipitous snapshots reflected real moments. Many of the addresses were Italian, evoking narrow streets and a colourful, highly observed public life. If you caught such vignettes in real time, you might venture a glance, a double-take, but nothing more. The site enables some voyeurism, but more like a real-time (and far less artful) William Eggelstone than a way to poke fun at unwitting strangers across continents.

Of all of Google's powers, from the handy (eg, illness tracking) to the show-offy (eg, the projection of real-time Google searches at headquarters) to the existential (typing "how do I know?" reveals some very interesting common searches), StreetView--the application used in StreetViewFun--is surely the creepiest. Strangers can almost peer into your window simply by plugging in your home address. It is not for nothing that Hamburg has just reached a deal to prevent faces from being visible in Google maps of the city.

A guilty pleasure of mine has long been the blog Overheard in New York, in which people submit snippets of dialogue heard throughout in the city. Entries are sometimes mean, sometimes stupid and often funny. But all of them allow us to understand the city as a reservoir of drama, of idle chit-chat and poignant exchanges, delivered within earshot. It perks up our own ears to those perfect snippets of conversation we wish we had overheard in the din.

I'm not suggesting that porch-sitting and real-time people watching can be replaced by a Google app. But how nice (and strange) for a moment at my desk to mimic a casual gaze from a cafe table. When StreetViewFun starts posting pictures of old ladies falling down, I suppose I'll reconsider. But for now, I like the idea of enhancing the view.

~ ARIEL RAMCHANDANI

Picture Credit: Tim Patterson (via Flickr)