Other than my project to create virtual pants, I'm also interested in the future. And I wonder how long it will be until Google combines search with Google Earth modeling to produce virtual reality searching. If you use Google Earth, then you've seen how you can zoom and tilt to view game-like models of real spaces: it's trippy. And if you click on links, you get videos or Wikipedia entries or photos. But the results are sparse.
So how long until the whole Internet is mapped to Google Earth, where my blog posts appear above my GPS coordinates? And I can zoom through midtown Manhattan and spot people who have their Gmail chat function open and just want to talk? "Hey, you in the Guggenheim? Point your notebook's webcam at that Calder mobile; I need some video. Got it, thanks."
Or click on a restaurant and order take-out and then zoom out to see its exact location and what side of the street it's on. Or click on the delivery vehicle to see real time estimates for when my Mongolian beef with white rice and broccoli will arrive.
And what about everything else that talks to the Internet? Can't I see every wireless connected user? I can with my XO. What about the future of movie plots? Will Diane Lane ever need to suffer at the 'net skillz of an Untraceable killer again? "This killer is completely anonymous; we'll never find..., oh there he is, right there on GoogleEarth2. Right-click his ass and change his attributes from hidden to read only, and call SWAT."
I'm not a computer dude, but I can't see why this isn't happening now. Other than the sheer enormity of the massive bandwidth consumption completely crushing the backbone and leaving the Internet as a hobbled paraplegic, barely able to handle 28.8 dial-up connections, I don't see why this isn't now.
Regarding libraries, if each book had an RFID tag, the user could zoom into our 3D rendered library (remember, this is Google, where people actually go, and not Second Life where people dance and fly, but not much else) and pinpoint the exact location of any book, and the überdörk librarian would just pull the book off the shelf (there might still be some books Google hasn't digitized and absorbed) and use her iPhonePodBookPersonalmassagerBlackjackcardcounter to scan a few pages for the customer.
Oh, that would be too much information, you might say. But you could filter out all the teens on MySpace and lonely guy wanksearch activity if you wanted. But, come on, really, would you want to? I bet you really want to walk up behind pornodude #16 after his burst of online and inpocket activity to say,
"There. You done now? Happy? We know what you did. The whole world knows what you did. See this dot here on GoogleEarth2? That's you. See how your dot is colored fuschia? That denotes your shame. And yeah, it's permanent."
