Tomorrow’s armchair travelers will increasingly be able to not only see distant places, but to be part of them. So far, most of those interactions consist of somebody giving a buzzing drone the finger. This is the raw beginning of an entirely new dimension to surrogate travel - interaction. Now drones and the rare telepresence robot are becoming a part of our lives. But our smartphones have already brought the ancient flat map alive with real-time updates on the location of our arriving Uber or Lyft rides. Most of the surrogate travel we’ve talked about is to a pre-recorded “place,” static and fixed.

Live feeds, of course, are a step in another direction. As video sources multiply, from CCTV to private smartphones, future services may bring in not only photos but also live feeds from all over the world. What about video? Current street views are static, as if time had stopped. So tomorrow’s street views may not only give us “surrogate travel” in space, but also in time. People have long been fascinated with comparing the same scenes as they change over time, and computers can now automatically map photos to their place and viewing angles in the real world. Conversely, Google and competitor’s technology for mapping street views onto three-dimensional models also improves.Īugmented reality promises to flip the whole process, and bring more and more computer-linked information to the real world as you walk through it. As 3-D models get better, the artificial views they produce rival actual photographs. Street views remains one of three very different ways of representing places: flat maps, three-dimensional models like those in games or Google Earth, and photographs of the world as it really appears like Street View. What will the armchair traveler see 30 years from now? The first interactive movie maps go back more than three decades. Social ImpactsĪugmented reality (AR) brings the power of interactive maps to the real world as you experience it. A small percentage of these are staged, from mock fights to flashing: being recorded brings out the ham and the prankster in some people. Since Street View’s start, a number of websites have sought and shared sexy, humorous, and shocking images recorded by the roving cameras. Russia doesn’t restrict public photos, and nothing is blurred in street views by search engine Yandex. Japan limits camera height to avoid topping walls. Far more German households opt to blur their property than elsewhere. Privacy norms and laws also vary by country. In response to both public and government pressure, many services including Google’s now blur faces and license plates automatically, and remove other things – from nudity to a sensitive military base – on request. This tension has been a part of street view projects since the 1970s. But there’s a big difference between being seen in the moment or just by those nearby, and having your public self recorded and potentially seen by millions. Street View now blurs faces and license plates in order to address privacy concerns.

3d street view maps