Needed A Google Earth For History
By Sorit Gupto
28 October, 2005
Countercurrents.orgIt is said, science and technology helps human beings know about themselves, solve the mysteries of nature and understand things better. At the same time, democratic dissemination of scientific information has always disturbed the state. The ongoing hue and cry over the google earth website is a case in point.
The internet's foremost search engines, Google, has come up with a software called `google earth' through which now it is possible for anyone having a net connection and a computer to have a bird's eye view of the world. Nothing new about it, except the fact that till recently, the state had the monopoly over such information.
Now it is virtually possible to visit each and every corner of earth. It is a boon for students as well as each and every common man. So why there is such tantrums are going on?
Simply because state does not like this, and history shows that it is also not a new thing either. Information is a tool to bring the change in the day to day life of the common man but for the state , information is not only a tool but also a weapon by which it used to suppress, manipulate and dictate the mass since the early days of human civilization. That is why the state always has the tendency to have a complete grip and control over the information.
Right from the early stages of the history, state is supposed to have monopoly rights over the access and distribution of the .
For eg. in ancient India, only the person belonging to Brahman cast was allowed to study the Vedas . Not only the rest of the population but also women were not allowed to study the same . In other words only a hand full people belongs to higher cast was allowed to get the education, and need less to say that they were the power center.
In Roman empire and ancient Greek societies also we can see that the slaves were not allowed to study. Medieval theocratic states of Europe leads the whole population into the dark ages, where the person like Galileo and Bruno were send to prison and severely tortured because of their discoveries. At that time also, the state felt disturbed because, after this information it was next to impossible for the state to manipulate the public mind and their consensus like before.
Coming to the technology called, Remote sensing satellites, It is not a new thing , and not the photographs taken by the satellites are some thing very new. The remote sensing satellites with ample scope of it's positive contribution in the field of Agriculture, Forestry, Weather forecast and so on, is now being used for mere purpose of spying mainly , and sadly, by doing so all of its other potential uses is become secondary or a 'byproduct' to be precise .
What google is providing is actually the technology of much inferior kind as compared to the modern days satellites. Still one can able to gather various information, the rate of deforestation, ecological devastations , rate of urbanization to name a few and by doing this, there is a possibility of making the state answerable for any misinformation by crosschecking . That's making the state uncomfortable.
Terrorism as a concept is doing nowadays what the concept of hell was doing few centuries ago. To make the concept of Hell believable , the Medieval state had created the hell like situation in very this society, and the new state is terrorizing the whole population just to make us believe the existence of terrorist threat.
That is why they are saying that terrorists can use this software to attack on the sensitive targets . Developments of successive wars with Iraq and Afghanistan, attacks on Kosovo, bombing on Sudan and numerous other examples has shown us, who has actually misused the informations and data provided by the satellites and it has also proved, for whom interest ,all these things has happened.
And still we have to believe that this software is going to be a disastrous consequences on the modern day civilization.
What we actually need is a google earth like software through we can visit not just through the geography but the course of the history of human civilization as well.
