Take a stroll through the city without leaving your home: Chiangmai and San Francisco @ MapJack
This blog entry from Stuart G. Town’s blog informs about a cool new software-website called Mapjack. Similar to Google maps-Google Earth technology, Mapjack takes map navigating to the next level: Real time touring. Though Google Earth allows one to explore the globe real time in a partial-artificially rendered world, Map Jack uses actual still images to create a realistic cyber world ready for the masses to explore on foot, without ever lifting more than a wrist.
The walking theme is Jack, a cyber point of reference/point of view who moves around the different parts of the city at your command. His view is accumulated real images of various angles in the city–covering hot spots and major roads and attractions. Mapjack’s navigation is divided into a split screen–the bottom an aerial-satellite overview of the location, with the top half as your real time view. Currently, there are only two cities featured, San Francisco and Chiangmai, but the site promises to bring more in due time.
With such advances in technology, or more precisely, with more convenient access to such technology, expanding one’s horizons is taking on an awkward new shape in this age of Information. While it may be awesome to take a cyber walking tour of an entire city or any location for that matter, the mapjack concept is only the tip of the iceberg of what we can expect in the future.
If you want masses to pay for a cyber or virtual tour-exploration in place of the real thing, then you will need to make the experience as real as possible, implimenting all the senses. The first step is visual, next will be audio, and once perfected, than we can expect aroma-smell, as well as some kind of ‘feel’ stimulations.
Computers will definitely have to evolve from the current external device platforms to some kind of internally integrated system that can efficiently and affectively collaborate and interact with human senses. Chip implants? Perhaps. Some day soon, we’ll be able to visit all the furthest frontiers–taking instant trips and holidays, and all without ever have needed to exercise a muscle.
And this certainly won’t be limited to earth. With satellite and space imagery advancements, humans will be embarking on space missions well before a spaceship will ever be able to get us to the stars…mark these words, for this is the future.
Speaking of which, Mars is already only a click away! Google Mars has actually been around for a few years, but the images are getting better with time. Check it out.
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