Global perspective

Wrapping up here and I thought I'd share what someone at work mentioned to me earlier today and I finally had the chance to play with: Google Maps. Holy crap!

I found every house I've ever lived in, down to driveway-level detail. Absolutely freaking amazing. Try it. You can even enter your address and the thing will put a flag on your house (or pretty close to it.) Be sure to click "Hybrid" in the upper right corner of the map for the best effect. Find your homes, schools and stomping grounds. They're all there (some images appear to be captured months or years in the past, awaiting a refresh from busy satellites.) Then zoom across the world and find airstrips in Malta and swimming pools in the Outback.

Then take a moment to appreciate what this represents. That in a moment of casual curiosity, you can view more cartographic information than two trillion Magellans and Columbuses could ever hope to detail had they been immortal and born in the Cretaceous era.

The thing is fluid and stunningly detailed. This technology is bristling around us, sometimes unbeknownst to us. Take a moment to soak it in. You may just get a bird's eye view of some place you'd thought you'd never see again...and see just how far we've come.