Immortalising the quotidian


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I must confess that I have spent the last forty minutes scrutinising my house from various angles, courtesy of Google’s ‘Street View’ utility. I suspect I was at home when the images were taken, because my car is parked outside. My next door neighbour certainly was. She’s gossiping over the fence to the woman two doors down.

I’ve also been taking the opportunity to scrutinise some of the restaurants in which I recently ate, during a visit to Florence. There’s an umbrella obscuring the menu at the All‘Antico, so I can’t tell whether the excellent steak in Chianti sauce was available the day Google visited.

Perhaps Street View is intrusive. The detail is certainly phenomenal. And I’d imagine it will become a necessity for all manner of snoops and burglars. There may well even be innocent practical purposes to which it can be put. I'd speculate though that the primary benefit is that it's novel and rather entertaining.

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