Tuesday, November 21, 2006

Google Finds God


I know I'm not the first person to write enthusiastically about Google Earth. It gives the user a bird's eye view of just about any location in the world; some places with enough detail to pick out individual people. I'm pretty sure that one of the first things someone does when they fire up Google Earth is to look for their house and their surroundings. Maybe next they look for some famous locations, like a monument or tall building. If you're a budding explorer, geologist, or even theologian, Google Earth may be a useful tool.

One user was browsing around his hometown in Italy when he saw some unusual markings on the ground. He did a little exploring and concluded that he had found something big, most likely subterranean ancient ruins. The National Archaeological Museum of Parma confirmed it to be an old Roman villa, and now a dig is being commissioned to see what lies beneath the soil. (from nature.com)

A geologist was examining a recently discovered impact crater in Egypt when, on his zoom out, more circular structures came into view. Huge craters, over 20 km in diameter, that had never been reported as discovered! Yet a satellite orbiting the Earth and taking pictures was able to see them, and broadcast images for the world to uncover. (from AstroSeti.org)

The title of this post is a bit of a stretch. Certain individuals have claimed that, using satellite photography (but not necessarily Google's), they have been able to locate the remains of Noah's Ark, providing proof of the Old Testament and restoring faith in God. This claim is far more susceptible to doubts and criticism than the first two, but it adds to my point.

So what's the story? In one of my first posts, I outlined why Ask.com might provide a better search experience than Google. This was not meant to discount Google in any way. One of their philosophies is to provide the world with free access to information. They are scanning and archiving thousands of books and papers, compiling news reports, and now presenting glimpses of the world we may never get the chance to see in real life. Technology growth brings wonderful opportunities, and allows anyone to make important discoveries. The idea of technology interacting with religion, well, that's another topic for another day.

3 Comments:

At 9:59 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Google Earth reminds me of something Neal Stephenson wrote about in "Snow Crash," his incredible science fiction work chronicling a future where people had both a live persona and a virtual persona in a kind of internet-world. In the book, our hero, "Hiro Protagonist" has a program in the virtual world that is basically a live-updated google-earth. It is a huge earth that allows the user to zoom in on live footage of what is going on - when I read it it sounded just like google earth. Interesting stuff.

 
At 12:07 PM, Blogger Pinkou said...

For those who feel google is their religion read this funnt GOOGLE AARTI

Google Aarti!!

 
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