Lots of Monkeys

Thanks to Paulo for the inspiration of the new more descriptive name for Google Latitude.  It’s location sharing, using your phone and best approximation via cell tower triangulation, or the GPS built into your phone.  It’s neat in theory, yet a bit clunky and a little bit awkward on my not so fast phone.  So now you, too can find out where I am.

With my permission, of course.  Although now, it seems less functional and just something to people will have to think about when they’re having extramarital affairs.  Although ATM withdrawals and credit card statements are perfectly capable of providing that same information, although not in real time.

It is strange, because signed up for it with nary a thought, and yet I hesitate at the thought of joining Facebook.  I guess with Latitude, I could always turn off my phone or sign out.  But Facebook seems like a persistent invasion of privacy, even though I know I can set privacy options to hell and back and not ever log in.  I talked about this with Lori, briefly, about a possible government subpoena of Google’s records.  I had to think about it for a while.

Google already knows who my friends are, what I’m searching for, who I’m talking to, who I’m emailing, when I’m doing these things with which friends, what personal documents I edit, and now, they know where I am.

Besides, if the government wanted my location, they can just get the cell tower info from the telcos anyway.  Hell, they may already have it, now that I think about it.  And the more I think about it, the more I realize that we gave up our privacy a long time ago.

It’s just that the internet makes the loss more immediately felt, more apparent.

You know, when you get a gazillion spam messages the next day.

I’m kind of hooked on Google Image Labeler. I know it’s work that computers cannot do. I know it’s work. I know that despite their best efforts to not be evil, google is exploiting the citizens of the internet as cheap labor. I know that it’s a clever, trickster god method for google to get human beings to label their images for their search engine.

I know all this, and I keep playing it.

How does it work? First, you are matched up with an anonymous partner. Then, you are both shown the same image. You are shown a list of words that are “off limits” if any. For instance an obvious picture of a woman may not allow “woman” as the label, forcing you to recognize the person or get more creative.

You have two minutes to get through as many pictures together as you can. You get points for matching labels, with more points being awarded for labels outside the norm, although I don’t know how they actually judge them. At the end of two minutes, you are shown your partner’s responses, and the sources for the pictures.

I have tried to figure out why this is so compelling. Is it the multiplayer with an anonymous stranger? Is it because it is a “game” that taps the shared unconscious? Is it the opportunity to flex the vocabulary that has languished while I bend aetheric energies to my will? Is it the opportunity to be really snarky with photographs?

There are probably many reasons. But whenever I’m playing it, I feel as if our shared (internet) cultural currency becomes manifest in our responses.

If there is one thing I’ve learned is that I don’t know Josh Brolin from Josh Groban, nor do I know my Hiltons as well as most people do. As a rule, I am horrible with celebrities.

If there is one thing that could be done to improve the “game,” (fingerquotes!) it would be to increase the resolution of the pictures. Sometimes, it’s just too difficult to recognize a screenshot of Ninja Gaiden Sigma when it’s shrunk down to 120 pixels in width.

Also, I think I just played the game with internet presence Cory Doctorow. It may or may not have been him (you can display whatever nickname you want), but I got a kick out of reading the responses. I really should have tagged that one pro wrestling picture with “thinly veiled homosexuality.”

That match would have been awesome.