For and Against: is Google’s Street View really giving us a better view of the world?

I’ve been with the Royal Geographical Society for more than 35 years and when I first started working here, helping to support remote field research projects, the only mapping available was in paper format. Often these maps could only be bought ‘in country’ and would have strict security conditions attached to them. Today it’s different and we’re all geographers, largely because we’re able to make use of online geospatial data mapping and photographic technologies. And the great thing is, we don’t have to be map-readers. We can look at Google’s Street View for a virtual representation of places. This curiosity can lead us from being a desktop explorer or an armchair traveller to enabling us to move between different types of imagery that can help us interpret what we are seeing.

We need to stop thinking of these systems as fledgling technologies or toys on a level with so many of the applications that we see on smartphones these days. These geographic information systems are potent educative tools in the teaching of geography. You could also say that they have strong appeal to today’s students who are willing to engage with a digital learning environment. When Google Earth first came online there was a fear that that we’d all end up doing virtual fieldwork and that we would never get out of the classroom again. But we have now seen the benefits of new technology complementing real-world learning.

We ran a programme to show teachers how they could bring Google Earth into the classroom. In partnership with an online educational charity called Digital Explorer, we trained over 500 teachers to use these technologies. As a result, pupils are now able to integrate Google Earth and Street View into field studies of their local areas.

When it comes to sensitive and fragile ecosystems, where there may be ethical or environmental considerations, digital online mapping and visual resources can be of great benefit. For example, interior panoramas of Captain Scott’s huts in Antarctica are now on Street View. This provides an excellent way of putting the physical artefacts that you can currently see on display at exhibitions in London and Cambridge, into their original context. Being able to take a virtual tour, we can look at and marvel at a special place without causing it physical damage.

Throughout my time at the Royal Geographical Society there have been extraordinary changes in the technology that has been available to explorers, travellers and field scientists. One of my roles here is to host a weekend conference called Explore, where one of the things we do is showcase innovation in digital technology. Geographers were, of course, early adopters of geographic information systems, but initial high costs meant that GIS was only really available to the university community, professional mapping companies or large-scale NGOs.

Google Earth has completely transformed that by putting mapping tools into the hands of anyone at the click of a mouse and at little or no cost. As a result we now have digital mapping integrated into scientific field research and disaster relief efforts. I’ve been involved in helping to train people going out into the field in the use of these technologies and how to integrate them into other digital communications platforms such as websites and blogs.

It’s fascinating that in the 1960s high-resolution imagery satellite imagery was in the hands of governments and space research agencies, but was never available to the public. As the decades progressed there was much discussion about large-scale databases being used to monitor changes in the world. But very few organisations had the money or inclination to make that happen. So thank goodness Google had the resources and vision to bring this data together and make it available to us all both as maps and photographic records to enable us to interact with our own geographies.