No, it’s not another rant about Bush’s spying on Americans without a warrant. I can’t believe people aren’t more upset about that, but whatever.

This is more about Google. Specifically, a really awesome program called Google Earth. (You can get a Mac version, if you’re one of those Mac nutjobs.)

Basically, it integrates satellite photography with mapping technology and lets you look at stuff all around the globe. You can “fly” around in virtual 3D mode, pan and scan around something, and in many city centers you can even click to turn on 3D buildings and then the shapes of the buildings appear on the screen. It’s really really really cool.

I don’t really have time to do it justice right now… but if you have a relatively new computer (last couple of years) and a high-speed connection (which is definitely required- don’t even bother trying over dialup) this is a really neato toy.

What brought it to mind was an article I was reading about it the other day. Basically, some other governments are upset about the availability of these images for free, online, to anyone. I can’t be sure exactly which article I was reading; there’s one that I think was originally in the Christian Science Monitor, and then I found another that was in the International Herald Tribune.

They both boil down to the same thing, which is that places like India, Australia, South Korea, and others are not happy with these images being available. They think it gives an advantage to people that would do them harm, as in a military setting or for terrorists to plan attacks on nuclear installations or tourist sites, etc.

I can understand where they’re coming from, but to a great extent this is an example of people getting upset WAY after the horse has escaped the barn. These images have been commercially available for a long time now; they’ve even been searchable online for some time to anyone in the world with a high speed connection to the Internet. All Google has done is to build an excellent, easy-to-use program to make use of these images.

In fact, there’s a HUGE number of satellites that are whirling over our heads all the time:

More than 3,000 artificial satellites are currently in orbit around Earth collecting photographic and other data. Much of it is accessible to any interested researcher or buyer. “High-quality satellite data has been commercially available for many years,” says Michelle Petrovich, a spokeswoman for the US Department of Homeland Security.

Man. I knew there were a lot up there, but 3,000 that are collecting data? Wow. Anyway, the point is that anyone with the dough can actually hire commercial services to do photo surveys of whatever they want; there’s tons of satellite imagery that’s controlled not by governments, but by private sources. There are a few laws that dictate some things; for example, US law says that you can’t do high resolution satellite photos of Israel. But overall, there’s a lot of data out there.

As we move more and more into a world where almost every bit of information is available to everyone on the planet, we’re going to have some growing pains. This information transfer represents, in my mind, a quantum leap in the interconnectedness of humans to one another. Some of the old ideas of what constitutes a “nation” are going to go away, and some of these other nations (and some of US here in the USA) are damn well going to have to get used to it.

Of course, Buddhist philosophy has been saying for thousands of years that we’re all interconnected anyway. Yet another example of the wisdom to be found there. (Hey, the site is called “Blue Eyed Buddhist”, you’re gonna have to read stuff like that from me. Get over it.)