How Google Street View lets people reconnect with lost loved ones
Technology is changing the way we connect with our family and friends, so it only makes sense that it would also change how we remember them -- something Google Street View is facilitating in surprising new ways.
In recent years, more and more users of Street View have been harnessing the power of the service's time shift feature, which allows you to move backward and forward in time to sometimes catch loved ones as they were captured by Google's Street View cameras.
Google's street mapping tool offers images of a wide range of locations dating all the way back to 2007. Because of that, some users are taking nearly decade-long trips back in time and discovering images of deceased members of their families as they were photographed at their addresses.
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When compared to a photograph of the same address from more current Street View scans, the contrasting images offer a surprisingly stirring bit of nostalgia only possible in our new digital context.
The faces are, as a rule, blurred, and you'll usually only find someone you know if you know exactly where to look.
Yes, the faces are, as a rule, blurred, and you'll usually only find someone you know if you know exactly where to look. But equipped with the right address and a sharp eye for detail, Street View turns into a kind of "god view" of the world, exposing moments in time you wouldn't have otherwise seen.
A search on social media services like Twitter and Facebook quickly reveals a number of surprise Street View memories unearthed by users. But some, like Bill Frankel, have mustered up the courage to share their emotional discoveries. Last month, Frankel shared the pain of his brother stumbling upon their father on Street View, just months after his death.
Another user, going by the name "DUCKS_PDX503" on Reddit, shared his story of finding an image of his grandmother added to Street View just prior to her passing.
"What surprised me, was that Google captured one of the last few pictures of my grandma, because she passed away less than a year after that picture was taken," the user wrote. "I thought it was such an uplifting and awesome picture because it showed just how laid back and awesome she was."
But the Google-facilitated reminiscing isn't limited to human connections. A number of users have taken to Street View to surface old images of their beloved pets as well.
And whether the subject is furry or related by blood, no one is immune to the inadvertent magic of Street View.
While researching the story for more Street View-powered remembrances, I decided to try it out on one of my own deceased relatives. To my surprise, back in 2007 (the year Street View was launched), I found the familiar image of my late grandmother's car in her Florida driveway and, when I moved the time span control to present day, the driveway and the house were devoid of any trace of her time there. I sat and stared at the image, letting the feelings associated with the memory of my time with her there wash over me. And I was grateful for the accidental archive.
That brief dip back in time provided a powerful tableau of two family images -- present and past -- juxtaposed against Street View's normally utilitarian function, and it's something I won't soon forget.
Hopefully, Google will take note of this increasingly common cultural hacking of its mapping service by its users and find a way to make these digital ghosts live on, impervious to software updates and database refreshes. In a perfect Street View world, everyone gets to live forever.
h/t Mashable France
Topics Google
