History, New and Improved

An interesting story emerges from New Orleans. Google Earth has quietly replaced all satellite imagery of New Orleans with pre-Katrina photographs! On the internet, New Orleans has now been completely rebuilt, Chalmette and the Ninth Ward pumped dry, and the levees reconstituted. I salute the virtual White House and the cyber-Army Corp of Engineers. Their real counterparts could learn a thing or two from them.

You can see my old neighborhood as it was here. (Click on "satellite" to see the pictures.) Now picture many of the houses gone, with only a concrete slab remaining. There would also be a few roofs ripped off, cars on top of houses -- you know, the usual stuff. Note also that the copyright at the bottom says 2007. There is no indication that this photo is from 2005. A casual observer could be easily forgiven for thinking this photograph is current.

What I really want to know (not virtually) is who decided to do this. Why would someone at Google decide that erasing such a sad chapter from recent American history was the proper thing to do? Did they think they were protecting the public from unpleasantness? Perhaps the New Orleans photos were getting too many hits, and Google thought this was the internet version of rubbernecking.

My worry is that this is the handiwork of some politician who thought it advantageous to hide the slow pace of the recovery. Whatever the cause, this certainly shakes one's confidence in the internet. The internet theoretically democratizes information, allowing anyone access to the truth, no matter what the press and the government feed us. Unless internet companies choose to alter the facts. 

Comments

[Ex Utero]

Somebody is making money and or political points from this somehow.

[Daniel Newby]

There's no conspiracy. The private surveillance companies were simply losing money by giving their pictures away for free. Now they are not.