Introduction

This article emerges from a reported incident in April 2009 where residents of Broughton in Buckinghamshire, England staged a spontaneous protest which blocked the progression of a Google Street View vehicle intent upon photographing and processing their area for the much publicised new web application. The protest received local press attention on occurrence and was also picked up by the national media, framed as a talking point to highlight the issue of privacy, data protection and Google’s vast and rapid expansion. The following discussion seeks to delve a little deeper into this event and situate it in the context of existing and nascent debates and concepts relating to the digitisation of homes, mapping and new media scopophilia. The intention is not to dwell on the incident as a valiant uprising against a sinister neo-Orwellian force or as a milestone in the ongoing litigious matters relating to intrusive media forces. Rather, the essay will use the events as a gateway to discuss the implications of simulated geographies and the public/private spheres in order to contend that Google Street View is involved in acts of ‘symbolic violence’ when spatial mapping and digital re-ordering place the photographed home in virtual spaces. My argument is that this positions the subject within a vortex of power in which the perceived agency of the user to choose whether or not to participate becomes the same site where power is evident and enforced. Stuart Hall writes that identities are ‘produced in specific historical and institutional sites, within specific discursive formations and practices, by specific enunciative strategies. Moreover, they emerge within the play of specific modalities of power.’ (Hall, 1996, 3) Hall draws attention to the importance of language in this discursive power dynamic but increasingly however, the image is a prominent feature in communicative processes and the massive proliferation of multimedia is part and parcel of this. David Harvey has written ‘Images are increasingly important to identity…[and] image makers and the media assume a more powerful role in the shaping of political identities.’  (Harvey, 289)   The interplay between the image-makers, the public, and the represented is complicated by recent mapping projects such as Google Street View, where one's own sense of identity in relation to place, community and proliferating digital spaces is laid bare.

Unremarkable Surveillance

Launched in May 2007, Street View is an extension of Google Maps. The process of Street View mapping is described by the company in the following way:

1. The feature provides users 360° horizontal and 290° vertical panoramic street level views within Google Maps. Google collects these images using special cameras and equipment that capture and match images to a specific location using GPS devices. Once the images are captured, they are "sewn" together to create a 360° panorama. Faces and license plates are blurred before the panorama images are served and become viewable in Google Maps. (Behind the Scenes)
   

The images were originally recorded by a fleet of vans which have since been replaced by cars and more recently ‘trikes’ a ‘device reminiscent of an ice cream cart.’ (Ibid)

The application itself is controlled by the user zooming into Google Maps until specific locations are found. If the street has been mapped, then the user can ‘pick up’ a figure found on the ‘zoom toolbar’ (named pegman) and use this to navigate the Street View landscape. The language, design and tutorial material for Street View employs a user friendly if somewhat saccharine discourse (complete with animated musical segments on how to report a breach of privacy) and this highlights the defensive position Street View takes with regards to the privacy matter. This is shown in the information regarding privacy:

1. Street View contains imagery that is no different from what you might see driving or walking down the street. Imagery of this kind is available in a wide variety of formats for cities all around the world. (Privacy)
   

This stance is seemingly in response to concerns about the issue and illuminates the balance between the extraordinary technology employed and the simulated ordinary and uncontroversial nature of the mapping content. What is striking about much of the content garnered and carefully processed by this amazing technology is the banality of much of the imagery and in many ways the application seems to privilege form (the system) over content (a succession of mundane images).

The angered protesters of Broughton are of course not the first to raise concerns about the Google Street View initiative. A number of other incidents have added to the developing publicity which focuses on the feature as a controversial issue. In March 2008, it emerged that the US defence department had banned detailed recordings of military bases deemed to exhibit sensitive material which posed a potential security threat (Pentagon bans Google map-makers).  In the same month a Northern Irish assembly member claimed that Google had been ‘reckless’ in showing images of the exteriors of police stations under threat from dissident republican forces and MPs in Hereford have questioned the responsibility of Goole in publishing photos of the SAS Credenhill training base amid concerns about security.  In a smaller scale but significant case, a US couple attempted to sue the company for the invasion of privacy after their home appeared on Street View. Google won this case, bolstered by the fact that there are a number of ways in which individuals can remove images from the application through the use of a tool and that the blurring of individual's faces and car registrations takes place as a matter of course (Kiss, 2009). Some nations have been more cautious than others in welcoming the mapping by Google. Officials in Greece, Germany and Switzerland have all raised concerns about the database which is delaying global coverage.

In a UK cultural context, the Broughton protest can be seen as a larger interlinked unease concerning state surveillance and personal liberty. The UK population is famously known as the most surveilled in the world and British society and culture is intertwined with surveillance technology. A report for the Information Commissioner's Office (a UK independent body regulating access to information issues) states:

1. We live in a surveillance society. It is pointless to talk about surveillance society in the future tense…Some encounters obtrude into the routine, like when we get a ticket for running a red light when no one was around but the camera. But the majority are now just part of the fabric of daily life. Unremarkable. (Ball et al. 1)
   

Some encounters which obtrude into the routine have received significant press and are  part of an existing debate concerning state intervention in UK culture. A particular focus has been given to the presence of speed cameras on UK roads. The widespread introduction of these devices has been a bone of contention in the UK media and there have been many examples of motorists damaging, obstructing and evading speed cameras in small acts of rebellion, intervention or vandalism depending on your point of view. Popular motoring shows such as the BBC’s Top Gear have incorporated the speed camera debate into their vernacular and a vision of the speed camera as a symptom of an increasingly ‘nanny state’ to be brought down by the common sense of the everyman is familiar in UK culture. This issue has become something of a political hot potato and the Conservative Party has recently proposed a cessation of speed camera funding should they be elected, arguably to chime in with the sensibilities of said everyman. Although technically unrelated, the Broughton protest can be seen to fit in with the sense of distrust and dissatisfaction felt by many and indeed hailed by some as a national tradition. Reporting on the event, The Daily Mail (a right-leaning publication) commented on the actions of Paul Jacobs, one of the principal protesters:

1. Paul Jacobs is utterly astonished to hear that he is being hailed as some sort of international freedom fighter. A respectable, bespectacled 43-year-old real estate executive, he's not exactly Che Guevara material.
   

2. In fact, he was pretty astonished to find himself on the front page of this week's Milton Keynes Citizen.
   

3. So, when I tell him that he is big news in Norway and Turkey, he is positively embarrassed.
   

4. Because Paul thinks he has done nothing more heroic than abide by the ancient principle that an Englishman's home - or anyone else's home, for that matter - is his (or her) castle. (Hardman, 2009)
   

This notion of the modest Englishman defending the inalienable rights of the homeowner against intruding and unregulated corporate interference gives a specific national spin on the Google Street View. In pointing out the unremarkable nature of the protestors in this case, The Daily Mail highlights the frustrations of some ‘everyday’ folk willing to take matters into their own hands to protect their property (in this case the notion that burglars could use the application as a means of scouting out potential victim’s homes). However this also highlights the widespread and often unreported and unacknowledged acts of resistance that also take place.  John Gilliom states that there are:

1. Millions upon millions of people throughout the industrialized world engaged in widespread and diverse types of opposition and resistance to surveillance regimes. Depending on class, context, and circumstance, some get more formal, public and organized whilst others must necessarily remain personal, private and solitary. (Gilliom, 76)
   

Gilliom positions these small acts of resistance as a part of a much larger and unexcavated movement which takes place in a world of unremitting and ubiquitous surveillance. So just as the presence of surveillance is ‘now just part of the fabric of daily life. Unremarkable’ in the words of the report for the Information Commissioner's Office, so too might these unremarkable subversions be part of modern living to many, highlighted by the caution, distrust and rejection by some of the Street View agenda.

New Spatial Ordering

The realisation of Street View and its potential fits with great ease into a conspiracy theory model where surveillance is used for sinister and manipulative ends. Two canonical dystopian narratives in particular come to mind and one is often used in the discourse surrounding the application. The spectre of Orwell’s Big Brother looms large in internet forums and some media coverage of Street View and provides a familiar and not irrelevant platform on which to air concerns over the issue. (Smith, 2009) Another less invoked but equally fitting trope comes from Huxley’s Brave New World. In particular, the widespread use of ‘soma’ within the narrative, a narcotic which both elates and placates the populace, provides a metaphor for the concept of vicarious thrill disguising sinister scopophilia which some may be inclined to read into Street View and other new media applications. The soma comparison is relevant to the widespread success of Google Search and Google Maps which precipitates the anticipated success of Street View. The willing participation of the public and the ways in which Google has been woven in the everyday fabric of knowledge distribution points to a society hungry for the new, the fast and the ubiquitous. Many, though, also acknowledge the malaise that comes with such qualities and the alluring nature of quick information has its placating and potent side effects which represent an epistemological sea change.

One of the principle theories highlighted in the wake of the growing presence of new media is Michel Foucault’s reading of the Panopticon. The Panopticon’s function is rendered possible by its ubiquitous nature; this has both a spatial and temporal significance. It is both materially and geographically everywhere, there are no dark corners where the subject can escape perception. In addition, it functions at all times, and this adds great potency to disciplinary outcome of the mechanism.

1. Hence the major effect of the Panopticon: to induce in the inmate a state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power. So to arrange things that the surveillance is permanent in its effects, even if it is discontinuous in its action; that the perfection of power should tend to render its actual exercise unnecessary; that this architectural apparatus should be a machine for creating and sustaining a power relation independent of the person who exercises it; in short, that the inmates should be caught up in a power situation of which they are themselves the bearers. (Foucault, 1995, 201)
   

Some of the major perceived benefits of new media communication systems (their 24/7/365 qualities and their ability to neutralise spatial boundaries) are the very same qualities which align them to the Panopticon model. Key here is the fact that Street View is a Google product. This is increasingly something of a double edged sword in relation to the iconic position the company holds. On the one hand, ubiquity is what Google does; it is as much a part of its being as wetness is to water. Indeed, the company’s assumption that the goal of an entirely mapped, digitised and viewable earth is shared by all web users illustrates this. The way in which Google has helped integrate search culture into the fabric of our daily lives is an exercise in epistemological revolution and will no doubt go down in history as a major influence on 21st century society.  The processes involved in giving ubiquitous status to new media are described by Chris Chester as ‘acts of invocation’ (2002) and explored in terms of culture and power by Kelli Fuery who writes:

1. The increasing concern surrounding the issues of surveillance, identity theft, and data protection reflects the attachment and anxiety to the control and management of such threads in the wake of the new media…Power relations are an essential component of how contemporary society produces its systems of shared beliefs which result in what we understand as ‘culture’. These relations affect levels of productivity within individuals that enable active participation in forming social groups. This manifests itself through commonly held knowledges, beliefs, values and attitudes. (63)
   

As stated, Google’s dominance and everyday usage is one of its great assets. However, the proliferation of the company may also be one of the reasons why some are alarmed, resistant and defiant towards Street View. Just as the company has engendered a new means of gathering information it now seeks to create a new way of seeing the world and this is where a fundamental difference between Google’s other products and Street View emerges.

In most instances where we ‘enter’ the internet cyberspace, we enter as active viewer/participant. As navigators we use various tools (search engines, links, videos, etc.) in order to reveal and release information that is out there in the cyber ether and brought to us through the screen. This function privileges the user as panoptic spectator. The scopophilic sense of control is in the hands of the user and aided by applications designed to release sought content. We may of course choose to imprint ourselves on/within the cyberspace. This could involve participation in discussion forums and other user generated content (reviews, status updates, etc.) or the active upload of photographs, videos and other representations of ourselves and our homes and possessions on to net spaces. Many of us would have experienced moments when this active role has been taken out of our hands, for instance in finding ourselves ‘tagged’ or present in a photograph or video generated by another and posted on a web platform. This type of activity is an everyday occurrence for huge swathes of people and indeed ingrained with the usage and membership of social networking spaces such as Facebook. However, Google Street View works in a different context to these activities. This involves a shift in the panoptic emphasis. Street View positions the subject’s home within the panoptic gaze and gives access to others who may wish to view it from the active standpoint. Furthermore, scale is an issue here, no longer is this a friend, colleague or acquaintance who uses images to which we are connected, it is now a monolithic presence such as Google which plays the key role and in doing so, emphasises the passive role of the photographed individual and their home. Of course, Google is right and quick to point out the ease with which one can remove images from the application. However in doing so, the subject must take the defensive position, further distancing themselves from the familiar and dominant role of web-user and take on the role of gaze avoider on the margins of the web zeitgeist. As such, Street View disrupts the discourse of active participation and control associated with web use as empowerment. Paul Jacobs, a Broughton protestor provides a telling observation, "I've no objection to them taking wide shots of vistas - it's when they're taking close-ups of people's homes, that crosses the line." (Cellan-Jones, 2009)

This highlights the tension between the attraction of the hyperrealist spectacles which Google and its counterparts can offer, where the viewer’s spectorial position is privileged and the close proximity to such technology which some find invasive and troublesome. This tension can result in a desire to protect one's local, personalised and familiar space from the technologically pervasive wonders which is paradoxically so alluring when manifest in another context. Some have argued that the increasingly public, globally connected world can result in a heightened appreciation of the alternative private social and personalised space. Stuart Hall writes:

1. A respect for...roots [works in relation to] the anonymous, impersonal world of the globalised forces which we do not understand...face-to-face communities that are knowable, that are locatable, one can give them a place. (Hall, 35)
   

Considering this, the relocation of the knowable into a public virtual dimension is an act which crosses the boundary between private and public spheres and strengthens the hold that a corporate presence can have over the local, everyday and mundane.

Writing on knowledge and its relation to power, Michel Foucault states:

1. Knowledge linked to power, not only assumes the authority of 'the truth' but has the power to make itself true. All knowledge, once applied in the real world, has effects, and in that sense at least, 'becomes true.' Knowledge, once used to regulate the conduct of others, entails constraint, regulation and the disciplining of practice. Thus, “There is no power relation without the correlative constitution of a field of knowledge, nor any knowledge that does not presuppose and constitute at the same time, power relations.” (Foucault, 27)
   

Knowledge distribution is also a part of these power relations on a variety of levels. In taking images of places which contribute to our sense of belonging and being and replicating/reconstituting them as a part of a new epistemology, Street View is conducting an act of symbolic violence and this is emphasized by the interplay between mundanity and spectacle. The flagship examples of Google Street View involve major geographic locations and the capability to explore and scrutinize these iconic places highlights the technology in action. This is web use as spectacle, tied to existing spectacular locales. However, the reproduction of the local, domestic or suburban space involves an attempt to make spectacle that which is mundane and everyday. Bourdieu writes:

1. The agent engaged in practice knows the world…too well, without objectifying distance, takes it for granted, precisely because he is caught up in it, bound up with it; he inhabits it like a garment…he feels at home in the world because the world is also in him, in the form of the habitus. (Bourdieu, 1997, 142)
   

Bourdieu argues that this this lack of objective distance is a major contribution to symbolic violence where a person’s inability to see beyond normalized forces leads them to behave passively in relation to forces of oppression. However, I wish to emphasize the following phrase for the purposes of this essay; “he feels at home in the world because the world is also in him.” The home is the locus of the habitus, its everyday nature defines it and the re-representation, repositioning and re-contextualizing of the home involves a symbolically violent act. It is an attempt to replace one aspect of local habitus (the habitus of everyday routine) with another digital habitus (the web spectacle) and to assume that this is a given desire characterizes Google’s commitment to spectacle as habitus and is also a misunderstanding of the value of the mundane. Walter Benjamin pinpoints the tension here:

1. [t]he technique of reproduction detaches the reproduced object from the domain of tradition. By making many reproductions it substitutes a plurality of copies for a unique existence. And in permitting the reproduction to meet the beholder or listener in his own particular situation, it reactivates the object reproduced. These two processes lead to a tremendous shattering of tradition which is the obverse of the contemporary crisis and renewal of mankind. (Benjamin, 668)
   

Considering the rapid proliferation of technology which seeks to take the familiar, personal and mundane and reproduce it on the cyberstage, it is surely no surprise that there are fears, resistances and interventions around the process. Fuery contends that many people’s relationship with technology also highlights their relationship with and proximity to power.

1. A clear way to view the interaction between states of paranoia and power is through our acts of mediation, making sense and understanding in ways that are specifically relevant to us. Technology and its visual culture, particularly the process of creating and recording images, are emblematic of the negotiative act between the outside world and ourselves. (61)
   

Google clearly acts as broker in this particular situation at the moment and in re-situating the private (home) as public (broadcast) holds considerable power as image-maker and knowledge holder. If we are to view the home as a factor in identity formation, as something which expresses that part of ourselves which remains unpublicized and removed from the vortex of commercial forces then the intervention of Google into this realm (regulated but uninvited) is symbolically aggressive. Although Street View paradoxically marketed as an empowering phenomenon, giving access to the user and gaining strength through participation, the meticulous and constant nature of its realisation is hard to deny. Furthermore, the ‘record first, negotiate second’ stance of the company forces the viewed inhabitant to comply (either willingly or with reservations) or resist (personally, politically) and so come into contact with power in the New Media age.

For many, digital mapping is an obvious way forward which broadens the scope and potential of a hyperconnected, readily accessible and revolutionary virtual existence. For others it will simply be another means of gaining information in a fast, reliable and unspectacular fashion. For some though, this image reproduction will be an intrusive, unwelcome and unpleasant force and something to be avoided. The resistance to Google Street View also suggests that there will emerge a curious virtual space where the ambitious goal of total coverage is subverted by some of the very users it is aimed at. There will no doubt be virtual ghettos which exist as a result of the proliferation of Street View and the applications which follow. Unmapped and vacant sites (shadowed corners in the panopticon’s gaze) will exist in the virtual dimension and this will throw up interesting possibilities for those interested in the margins of social spaces and places.

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