Thoughts about Google, Part I
Oct. 30th, 2005 10:18 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
katsarisGoogle is rapidly reaching the level of a megacorporation similar to stature and importance of Microsoft. And I'm something of a Google fan in the sense that I often find myself looking forward to the next announcement about a Google service or tool the way I look forward to announcements of new books by my favourite writers.
I like Google. I like its vaguely stated "mission" about providing access to information, which for me synopsizes not only the whole mission of computer science (which in Greek after all tends to be called Πληροφορικη΄"Pliroforiki", loosely translated as "Information science") but perhaps the whole of science in general, and even mildly reminds me of some mythical knights' dedication to capital-T Truth. I like its "Try not to be evil" self-declared guideline, mainly for its humour.
My Gmail account at katsaris@gmail.com has freed me from dependency on my old ISP's mail account at katsaris@otenet.gr -- and even better from dependency from Outlook Express -- and even better from the annoyance of spamming.
Google News has become the most convenient way to staying informed about the world in general.
And I've drooled over my few sessions with GoogleEarth. Its probably the one tool that has shown me that even high-speed ADSL will soon prove inadequate. Even at version 3.0 it's still at its infancy I think.
Or such my imagination tells me, given how much more I think it can be expanded.
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What I want from Google Earth is...
... for it to become Google Universe or perhaps Google Cosmos. I want to be able to not only zoom in and in and in until I locate my apartment building, but also I want to be able to zoom out and out and out until I see the whole of the Solar System.
I thought of the concept of Google Moon before I found out one such site already exists at moon.google.com. That's a fine start, but I also want Google Mars, Google Venus, Google Ganymede and Google Asteroids. And I want them all incorporated in the same tool.
I want a "rewind" feature, so that I may see the planets spinning in their orbits, the paths of all probes sent out sketched from their launchpads all the way to their current locations. I want us to be able to set the point of view to follow these probes as they passed through the Solar System and beyond it.
I want Google Constellations in the sense that I want to know the way the stars looked at any given time from any given vantage point. And I want us I want us to be able to zoom even further out -- or perhaps the more accurate term would be to focus -- so that we can see all the way to the images of the most distant galaxies, as produced by the most powerful telescopes mankind has yet created.
I want the knowledge of what exactly we've discovered out there to truly become available at our fingertips.
And I want it all in the *same* tool. The same tool that will be showing me bus routes around Athens, I want it be the same tool that'll be showing me the spaceship routes around the Solar System. *That's* part of the point: It's the same universe after all -- Athenian suburbs and the moons of Jupiter.
Which is why I drool when I hear stuff like the Google-NASA cooperation. That cooperation is old news by now ofcourse. But I never got the chance to drool online over it before, so I'm drooling over it now.
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Google Earth is the one I'm drooling over, but Google Print is the one that has caused controversy - and Google Base is the currently much-anticipated new service, which mostly seems to mean to take Ebay head-on but to me also seems to have wider consequences...
More about this on other posts, as I find the time and mood.
I like Google. I like its vaguely stated "mission" about providing access to information, which for me synopsizes not only the whole mission of computer science (which in Greek after all tends to be called Πληροφορικη΄"Pliroforiki", loosely translated as "Information science") but perhaps the whole of science in general, and even mildly reminds me of some mythical knights' dedication to capital-T Truth. I like its "Try not to be evil" self-declared guideline, mainly for its humour.
My Gmail account at katsaris@gmail.com has freed me from dependency on my old ISP's mail account at katsaris@otenet.gr -- and even better from dependency from Outlook Express -- and even better from the annoyance of spamming.
Google News has become the most convenient way to staying informed about the world in general.
And I've drooled over my few sessions with GoogleEarth. Its probably the one tool that has shown me that even high-speed ADSL will soon prove inadequate. Even at version 3.0 it's still at its infancy I think.
Or such my imagination tells me, given how much more I think it can be expanded.
-------
What I want from Google Earth is...
... for it to become Google Universe or perhaps Google Cosmos. I want to be able to not only zoom in and in and in until I locate my apartment building, but also I want to be able to zoom out and out and out until I see the whole of the Solar System.
I thought of the concept of Google Moon before I found out one such site already exists at moon.google.com. That's a fine start, but I also want Google Mars, Google Venus, Google Ganymede and Google Asteroids. And I want them all incorporated in the same tool.
I want a "rewind" feature, so that I may see the planets spinning in their orbits, the paths of all probes sent out sketched from their launchpads all the way to their current locations. I want us to be able to set the point of view to follow these probes as they passed through the Solar System and beyond it.
I want Google Constellations in the sense that I want to know the way the stars looked at any given time from any given vantage point. And I want us I want us to be able to zoom even further out -- or perhaps the more accurate term would be to focus -- so that we can see all the way to the images of the most distant galaxies, as produced by the most powerful telescopes mankind has yet created.
I want the knowledge of what exactly we've discovered out there to truly become available at our fingertips.
And I want it all in the *same* tool. The same tool that will be showing me bus routes around Athens, I want it be the same tool that'll be showing me the spaceship routes around the Solar System. *That's* part of the point: It's the same universe after all -- Athenian suburbs and the moons of Jupiter.
Which is why I drool when I hear stuff like the Google-NASA cooperation. That cooperation is old news by now ofcourse. But I never got the chance to drool online over it before, so I'm drooling over it now.
-----------
Google Earth is the one I'm drooling over, but Google Print is the one that has caused controversy - and Google Base is the currently much-anticipated new service, which mostly seems to mean to take Ebay head-on but to me also seems to have wider consequences...
More about this on other posts, as I find the time and mood.
