The other day I was map googling, looking up Guttenberg, NJ. And as I should have remembered, it's right
on the Hudson River, right north of West New York. I zoom out for better context, and there's
the Upper West Side across the Hudson, with the American Museum of Natural
History called out, a major landmark.
Also called out
is Romemu, a Jewish Renewal congregation that meets in a Presbyterian church on
West 105th street, and Zabar's, and Ansche Chesed synagogue.
This strikes me
as rather odd. Zabar's, OK. Zabar's has been made famous in several New
York-loving movies. It might rate as a
tourist attraction. But Romemu, the shul
with the groovy music and meditation?
Not on the radar of your average Googler. Ansche Chesed? Even less so.
Strangely
coincidental that I've been to
Ansche Chesed recently for a friend's daughter's
bat mitzvah. And funny, too, that I briefly considered a bus trip to Romemu
with my fellow suburbanite shul members earlier this month. But I haven't looked either of these places
up on Google Maps, that it should remember.
Then I remember
that nothing is coincidental on Google, the Great Correlator. I must have Googled these two places
recently. Just plain text Googled; not
Map or Image or News Googled. Or worse, maybe I just mentioned these places in
a Gmail. My own keystrokes put them on the map
-- my map. Your map has been
thoughtfully highlighted with places you've searched on; if they happen to
be churches or mosques, probably with little cross and crescent icons instead of little stars of David.
Google now knows
our individual places, just as it knows and tells advertisers which display ads
to insert among the text columns in our browsers. They ("I was just
looking at sergers!") looked like amazing coincidences once, too.
Consider that the
Google/Android smart phone you carry around, beaming location data to all kinds
of web application servers, might also tell Google where you go and where you are right
now, in addition to places you merely research.
(That's why you may suddenly get
the discount coupon to the store or restaurant
across the street.)
With my
programming, I can't help but think about IBM, filtering Germany's census punchcards for Jewish names at Hitler's request. Even though I know you don't have
to be Jewish to be creeped out by what Google knows and keeps learning, from
the data crumbs we drop at every turn and click.
