Keeping with the theme of a spying government – here is another technology that has been developed and used by the CIA and Government to spy on people. It is a technology with incredible zooming capabilities, and by taking many simple pictures at different zoom rates, one can see oh so much more then the simple subject of the image. A quick Wiki search offers the best description for the technology and website that is a portal for citizen media and privacy issues:
Gigapan is a collaborative project of Google, Carnegie Mellon University and NASA AmesIntelligent Systems Division's Robotics Group. It is a robotic platform that attaches to a digital camera and some computer software. The robotic platform allows a user to take a photograph, then it will re-aim the camera with great precision, to take another photograph. After taking many photos, the software stitches all the pictures into a gigapixel image.
The website Gigapan is also a form or type of citizen media, similar to a blog. It is an open forum were people who use this technology can put their images together and post them; also allowing others to view the image and make comments and suggestions on them. It is open to the public and authors of the images have no control of the comments that the public says. For instance, the speech given by Obama at the inauguration, was captured by an individual who took approximately 120 shots of the speech, and put together the below photo image. Everything from the snipers, to people in the back far buildings can be seen in this shot. The people in the very background are unaware that they are being captured, very detailed, in the picture; they are a part of the scene without even being there (a major privacy issue).
The technology itself offers the availability to everyone, people in power like governments, CIA and FBI, as well as regular citizens. Anyone who has the means to purchase this camera is able to use it, and with tools like the internet, more specifically SPECGIN, allow people to share and communicated their pictures with the world. The internet is a portal, a gateway to sharing and participating in ones ideas and work. Here is the link I found to the Obama image, to see the detail and zoom capabilities - click on the small pictured 'snapshots'.There are many on this so take a look around! They are really incredible!
http://www.gigapan.org/viewGigapan.php?id=17217
Technological advances often leave us in an unsettling dilemma. Technology keeps improving to keep up with our advanced lifestyles. Today more than ever security (both on a national and local/personal level) has become a dominating problem. Technology has advanced in order to address this problem. The irony of it is in order to protect our privacy we must invade others involuntarily. (i.e. think of 9/11 and how that has affected how we travel).
ReplyDelete