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Street View

Today Google Maps unveiled its Street View feature for the city of Boston. Street View allows you to see actual photographs of the streets on a map. It’s useful technology to see what a particular restaurant or store looks like before you go there.

According to privacy advocates, it’s also useful technology if you’re an Orwellian Totalitarian Fascistic tyrant conducting visual surveillance on a sheep-like populace to find out whose shutters need painting or who has left their recycling bins on the curb one day last summer.

Me, I could have played with it all day. There’s a draggable icon person that you can put anywhere on the map, and then pan and zoom in order to fully gawk at the surroundings. I revisited some of my old apartments and offices. I hung out in Harvard Square then jumped over to Boston Harbor. I swung by my current office at International Place, and found a group of short-sleeved tourist walking by the main entrance (pictured below). Pretty cool.

streetview

Speaking of Boston’s streets… I love ’em, really I do. Boston is one of the greatest walking cities in America, because Boston is so cramped that there is no more room for any more cars, so pedestrians always get the priority of mobility. Unfortunately, this confers a sense of entitlement that has also made Boston a city of jaywalkers. I’m waiting for the day that a crowd of morning commuters crossing against a traffic signal in a critical mass is mowed down by a red-faced taxi driver who has worn out his horn.

Today, as I walked to the Post Office during lunch, I waited to cross Atlantic Avenue. A BMW ripped through the intersection just as the Walk signal light up. “Haven’t you ever heard of a Red Light?” a man shouted at the car. He was crossing the street about 20 feet away from the intersection on a step-saving diagonal, and so therefore was nearly hit by the BMW.

The woman driver leaned out and hollered “Haven’t you ever heard of a cross-walk?” before speeding away. Zing!

Posted in Massachusetts.

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