World of Dennis

There is a new way to waste your time on the internet now, and it is called Google Earth. Here’s how it works: you download this program on to your computer from Google, and it supplies you with a satellite map of the whole globe. Now, this is truly incredible and engrossing.

Imagine my amazement and delight when I was able to zoom in on my own house in Rockland, Mass. and actually was able to discern my parents’ two cars sitting in the driveway, or when I was able to zoom in on a hotel I stayed in while visiting Malaysia, or when I was able to ask friends online what their addresses were and zoom in on their houses, or … you get the point. Needless to say, this has really hijacked my plans to write a final column rebutting the responses to my column all semester long. So I decided to write about what is so fascinating about this, and use it as a way to wrap up my column.

I think the reason it fascinates me so much is that it is the world as it is, true and naked. So much of the time our perceptions of things are warped by our image of the place. We connect the Eiffel Tower, the Statue of Liberty, St. Peter’s Basilica and even the White House with so many emotions. Here everything is stripped away; the great monuments and cities are just small pieces of the larger landscape. Even the largest city is dwarfed by the earth surrounding it.

Moreover, everything is connected to a larger reality and community. If I zoom out from my house I see that it’s not separated or isolated, but rather part of a continuous and infinite network of humanity. My street blends into my town, my town blends into the Boston area, the Boston area blends into the Eastern seaboard, and so on. The boundaries we all think of as separating all of us are revealed as artificial.

Finally, Google Earth lets me explore places unfamiliar to me: the Himalayas, the Earth near the Artic circle, and distant metropolises like Istanbul or Paris. Seeing these places as they are takes the shroud of ignorance away from my eyes. They move from the murky world of the unknown to the bright world of the known.

Lest this sound like a commercial for a piece of software, there is a point to all of this. In short, I like Google Earth because it encourages me to embrace the things I truly believe about humanity. We are interconnected, but individually we are small. We are all similar and we can all be known.

Seeing the Earth as it really is makes it more difficult to discern differences in religion, culture, politics, and nationality. It shows that these things are not ingrained in the fiber of the earth, but are, rather, constructs of our cultures and our minds. Just as the creators of Google Earth used computer and satellite technology to overcome the barriers of geography, we can get around these constructs to know each other using our reason and come to a mutual understanding.

This would lead to a far better world than what we have today. Our fights would be less fierce and our denigration of one another would be less common. All that is needed is the acquisition of this knowledge and understanding.

If I were to sum up the thrust of my most of my columns it would be in this idea. I disdain those who harp on the differences of people, and try to create large conflicts out of nothing, and I’ve tried to call them out on it. I am constantly frustrated with the lazy and shrill among us who don’t bother to help the world by advancing understanding, but rather resort to cheap slogans and taglines because of their need to feel like they are “involved” in a political cause. I’ve tried to convince those people that it would be far better if everyone understood the world better than if they supported a particular ideology, no matter how good that ideology is …

In this semester I hope I’ve done for you what Google Earth did for me, that is, make you think about things from a different perspective. I also hope I’ve entertained you, or, at the very least, made you want to pick up The Daily Free Press when you passed by it on Thursdays. If you sent me hate mail, thank you so much. Laughing at your angry missives was one of my favorite pastimes this semester. After all, getting hate mail was my main motivation for becoming a columnist in the first place. I always aspire to be hated by people for what I say, because at least I know that I made people care.