Rob Walker (once of the great “Consumed” column in the NYTimes Mag) has a fascinating post that kicks off with his lust for Trekker, the backpack-mountable Google street view camera that will take their ambitious mapping project off the grid.
He connects it to Venue, an intriguing project to explore, geographically and in story-telling ways, lesser known byways of the U.S., making a suggestion that I hope Google takes up, that the Trekker be a “guest” instrument with Venue team.
Among the many interesting points: these new tools answer the idea that America is “explored-out.” You build new tools with new resolutions and modalities, and you find new frontiers, as Walker notes, “all over the place.”
And like the old frontiers, they come amply supplied with dark sides for those on the other “side” of the frontier. Nowadays, perhaps all of us when Google is doing the exploring.
A Few Reasonable Words 