Posted on April 16, 2007
People no longer need a $1,500 plane ticket to visit the Egyptian pyramids. Google Earth, a virtual globe that provides 3-D satellite images of earth allows a user to virtually travel anywhere in the world.
“It’s the greatest software invention of the 21st century,” said Steve Anderson, professor of the school in media arts and design. “My wife and I went to Italy last summer and I used Google Earth extensively before to pre-tour areas we would be going.”
The satellite image resolutions, all taken within the last three years, are so clear in most large cities that users can usually discern buildings, football fields and cars. As this has raised alarm in several nations concerned about matters of national security, Google Earth has agreed to blur out several locations around the globe.
“I look at places I’ve never been before, like palaces and monuments in the Middle East or known tourist spots in Europe,” senior Jarrod Taylor said. “It has a cool feature that puts markers on important parts of different areas you are looking at and it gives you basic information about it.”
John Woody, a professor in the school of media arts and design, also enjoys the program.
“I could spend hours on it flying with a good cup of coffee,” he said.
Google Earth enables anyone to update “placemarks” around the globe that users can click on to learn about different sites.
“The user contribution feature of Google Earth makes some of the information inaccurate, but the wealth of information is amazing and truly useful,” Anderson said.
It also allows users to zoom in on a city to view hotels, apartments, restaurants or metro stations, a feature that can provide practical help for many users.
“I have been looking for apartments in Reston, Va., and not only can I find their locations and ratings of their complex, but I can also get driving directions from their exact spot,” senior Brian Singer said. “You can also find dining locations through the layers, and if I was going up there it shows hotels and their prices.”
Woody said the 3-D program has also had an impact in the classroom.
“Last year I was in Chile where I shot a high-definition video on top of a mountain [in] Santiago,” Woody said. “I went back and showed my class what I had videotaped, and then through Google Earth, I was able to show them the exact location where my camera had been, a 360 — degree view.”
But Google Earth is not just a glorified world map.
The program has a new feature which allows users to type in current international crises such as the Darfur crisis. Users are then virtually flown across the Atlantic Ocean into Sudan where they can see sites and photographs of destroyed villages and read about the problems facing the nation.
“Google Earth helps place the issue in the context of a physical location where on can actually see, in a high-resolution imager, the physical destruction of the land,” said Anderson.
“It tends to bring the issue closer to home in an almost experiential way, and it’s fairly easy to see how such a tool can be used to raise...social consciousness.”
