The Brave New Frontier
For a while now many of us have been exposed to social networking sites like twitter, myspace, facebook, then dont forget Linked In, Bebo, and many others. In some of these mediums the concept of facial recognition software is not new, in fact it is almost old! But wait til you see this below!
A new way of taking pictures called Gigapixel imaging has made an appearance. Read the little blurb on the picture that the link below opens, then turn on the yellow button that says gigatag and zoom in and look. you will see how this big picture was taken of The Vancouver Canucks Fan Zone along Georgia St. for Game 7 of the 2011 Stanley Cup Final and the incredible detail it contains - made up of 216 photos over a 15 minute period.
But the fun and the scare is, how close you can zoom in to the people in the picture, and if you have the tags on you can click on the peoples names and see their facebook profiles. Whilst that is a bit of a hoot!, consider what law enforcement or worse criminals can do with this technology, they can identify people long after the event and isolate and KNOW who and where you are. I wonder if George Orwell had any idea of just how much his 1984 style technology allowing Big Brother to watch us all would affect us in our everyday life. I wonder if he knew his idea would become a reality or indeed if it was fiction based on a premise. Either way, we are now invested fully into a whole new frontier of life.
It was captured at 5:46 pm on June 15, 2011. It is made up of 216 photos (12 across by 18 down) stitched together, taken over a 15-minute span, and is not supposed to represent a single moment in time. The final hi-res file is 69,394 X 30,420 pixels or 2,110 megapixels. It is amazing. (Special thanks to Bonita Howard and CBC Real Estate.)
But the fun and the scare is, how close you can zoom in to the people in the picture, and if you have the tags on you can click on the peoples names and see their facebook profiles. Whilst that is a bit of a hoot!, consider what law enforcement or worse criminals can do with this technology, they can identify people long after the event and isolate and KNOW who and where you are. I wonder if George Orwell had any idea of just how much his 1984 style technology allowing Big Brother to watch us all would affect us in our everyday life. I wonder if he knew his idea would become a reality or indeed if it was fiction based on a premise. Either way, we are now invested fully into a whole new frontier of life.
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