Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology with
Speaker 1: tech Stuff from how stuff works dot com. Hello again, everyone,
Speaker 1: and welcome to tech stuff. My name is Chris Poulette
Speaker 1: and I am the tech editor here at how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com, sitting across from me as usual as
Speaker 1: senior writer Jonathan Strickland. And we're coming to you live
Speaker 1: from the bowels of Hades. Well, no, but it just
Speaker 1: feels like it because we're in our temporary studio until
Speaker 1: our regular studio is completely done being renovated. And it's
Speaker 1: a very very small office with a lot of computer
Speaker 1: and equipment, and it's quite warm. Yeah, we have all
Speaker 1: the lights off. Um, we're stripped down to just our
Speaker 1: our underwear. UM. I am, of course wearing the Batman
Speaker 1: under ru'se Um. Please help me. Yeah, last week it
Speaker 1: was The Wonder Woman once and I was told that
Speaker 1: was not appropriate. Uh So anyway, probably wouldn't have been
Speaker 1: such a big deal if you hadn't been walking around
Speaker 1: the office afterward. It was the lariat that was really
Speaker 1: giving people the problem. It's like, tell me the truth.
Speaker 1: I really hope we're going to edit this out. No,
Speaker 1: this is gonna state Liz, this all states and alight
Speaker 1: once we're done. And Mr Fredericks in the background snickering.
Speaker 1: Uh no, here's the problem, folks. It's hot and I'm
Speaker 1: I'm punchy. So just just warning you before we really
Speaker 1: get into this this episode. But this episode does come
Speaker 1: to us courtesy of a little listener mail. This listener
Speaker 1: mail comes from our our friend the scene. We've had
Speaker 1: him right in before. All right, So anyway, he says, Hi,
Speaker 1: j n C. I just wanted to give our first
Speaker 1: initial basis that's how good a friend he is, and
Speaker 1: any signs off tasks. So I just wanted to give
Speaker 1: a podcast suggestion because I don't remember hearing anything about
Speaker 1: it lately. I used to work as a docu management consultant,
Speaker 1: helping companies convert large filing systems of paper documents into
Speaker 1: electronic files with a database for search and retrieval. So
Speaker 1: my question, slash suggestion, how far are we from the
Speaker 1: paperless office? Is this even a goal of organizations anymore? Thanks?
Speaker 1: Love the show, So we're going to talk about what
Speaker 1: the heck happened to the paperless office? Uh, this is
Speaker 1: something that we've been hearing about for decades, quite a
Speaker 1: long time. And you all right, let me ask you this, Chris,
Speaker 1: from just your personal opinion, just technologically speaking and technologically only,
Speaker 1: do you think technologically we are at a point where
Speaker 1: a paperless office is possible? Not only yes, but I
Speaker 1: think we have been technologically at a point where it
Speaker 1: is possible to do it. I completely agree with you, Chris. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: we are at a point right now where we could
Speaker 1: go paperless if we really wanted to from the technological
Speaker 1: standpoint point. But here's the here's the issue. It turns
Speaker 1: out that offices are full of these things we call
Speaker 1: um was it people and people work differently than technology. Uh.
Speaker 1: There are a couple of reasons for this. One is
Speaker 1: a good a good point that was made in the
Speaker 1: Myth of the Paperless Office. That's a book by Abigail
Speaker 1: Selling in Richard Harper, Yeah, which you can buy in print. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and not yes, you can. You can actually buy a
Speaker 1: print copy of the pattern. It is kind of funny. Um.
Speaker 1: So the points actually a pretty interesting book. I'd like
Speaker 1: to go back and read it cover to cover because
Speaker 1: it's it's actually kind of interesting. Yeah. Well, the one
Speaker 1: of the points they make is that business evolved along
Speaker 1: with the use of paper, So with you know, paper
Speaker 1: wasn't an integral part of the way business started and
Speaker 1: and uh, and the way we think of business today,
Speaker 1: paper is a very important part of that and just
Speaker 1: taking it out of the equation just because you happen
Speaker 1: to have a computer doesn't really work. Yeah, it's funny
Speaker 1: because they're they're trying to take back the idea of
Speaker 1: the paperless office to its roots. Um. And it was
Speaker 1: a Business Week article in nineties seventies and they were
Speaker 1: talking to uh, Xerox Park had George Pick who was
Speaker 1: talking about the Office of the Future. How many times
Speaker 1: have we talked about the Office of the Future on
Speaker 1: the podcast? Um? But the funny thing is, uh, he
Speaker 1: didn't actually say that people have attributed it to him,
Speaker 1: But he didn't actually say that the Office of the
Speaker 1: Future would have no paper in it. In fact, that probably,
Speaker 1: as uh Selling and Harper point out, that probably would
Speaker 1: have been a very bad idea for him to say,
Speaker 1: since Xerox makes copiers. Um. But uh, you know it.
Speaker 1: But he said that, you know, there are technologies that
Speaker 1: are changing. The typewriter is going to go away, was
Speaker 1: one of them, and I think people sort of extrapolated
Speaker 1: from there. But I mean even um, in Dan Norman's
Speaker 1: book The Invisible Computer h. Thomas Edison, you know, they
Speaker 1: were talking about some of the recording technology that he
Speaker 1: came up with, you know, the cylinders, the black cylinders,
Speaker 1: and people would be able to make a recording of
Speaker 1: something and give it to someone else, so they wouldn't
Speaker 1: necessarily have to write out a memo to give to
Speaker 1: somebody else in the office. They could actually give you
Speaker 1: the recording, um and pass that around or you know,
Speaker 1: Veneva bushes memex from uh you know, as we may
Speaker 1: think back in the Atlantic article and that's another really
Speaker 1: good article to read if you're interested in if you
Speaker 1: had this idea, how um this sort of foreshadowed and
Speaker 1: sort of became a self fulfilling prophecy of the internet,
Speaker 1: that you would have a desk where you had all
Speaker 1: your materials and you would store them all on microfilm
Speaker 1: because again the internet he hadn't been invented yet. Um.
Speaker 1: But rather than you know, keeping a desk full of
Speaker 1: files and file folders and stuff on paper, you would
Speaker 1: basically take a snapshot of it and put it on microfilm,
Speaker 1: which is much smaller and more convenient to store. Um.
Speaker 1: You know. So people had a number of different ideas
Speaker 1: that had led up to it, and you know when
Speaker 1: they actually started thinking about the concept of well, you know,
Speaker 1: we could we could scannal this stuff in and store it.
Speaker 1: It would be so easy to go without paper. But yes,
Speaker 1: as it turns out, on a computer screen, you can't
Speaker 1: spread it all over your desk and see how everything
Speaker 1: fits together, or you know, tack it up to the wall.
Speaker 1: Or let's say that you have a report and the
Speaker 1: points you really want to hit in the report when
Speaker 1: you're making your presentation are on pages one and seven.
Speaker 1: It's very easy to take page one and then take
Speaker 1: page seven and leave everything else behind in a physical format.
Speaker 1: Now you can do that electronically too, don't get me wrong,
Speaker 1: but there's an extra step there. I mean, you've got
Speaker 1: that interface that you have to work with with the computer.
Speaker 1: With paper, you literally pick up one sheet of paper,
Speaker 1: pick up a second sheet of paper, and you're done, right,
Speaker 1: So I mean, there's no dealing with anything else. It
Speaker 1: is a very fast system. Um there. So paper has
Speaker 1: a real use in business and uh and and there's ah,
Speaker 1: so there's there's that part where paper and business are
Speaker 1: so closely entwined that uh that a truly paperless office
Speaker 1: is a difficult thing to manage. It's not impossible. There
Speaker 1: are offices that have done it, or at least have
Speaker 1: reduced paper to such an extent that you could more
Speaker 1: or less call them paperless. But for the most part,
Speaker 1: most businesses still rely, at least in some measure on
Speaker 1: paper because it's useful. It's useful, and it's easy, and
Speaker 1: we we have it culturally ingrained in us to use paper. Yep. UM.
Speaker 1: When you think about it, to paper is a form
Speaker 1: of technology. It's just a form of technology that's been
Speaker 1: ubiquitous for so long that we don't even think of
Speaker 1: it's being that way. It's there, but it is high
Speaker 1: tech we think about it. UM. It stays around for
Speaker 1: a very long time. I mean the quality of ink
Speaker 1: and the quality of paper that we have now, UM
Speaker 1: it's a lot more likely to last fifteen years than
Speaker 1: a particular file format. UM. That doesn't mean that we
Speaker 1: can't fix that, but the way things have been involving
Speaker 1: right now. UM libraries, for example, have have a very
Speaker 1: difficult time with this because UM file formats have been changing,
Speaker 1: the machines that play different kinds of file formats, changed
Speaker 1: the programs that are used. They go out of date.
Speaker 1: So the thing is, you have a you know, for example,
Speaker 1: we'll take from some something from my background, something I
Speaker 1: wrote in scribble for the Commodore Amiga, and I have
Speaker 1: it stored on a three point five inch floppy disc
Speaker 1: that I wrote out in college. Now I was, you
Speaker 1: know about let's say twenty years ago, which it was
Speaker 1: just about it's twenty years old. Something that I wrote
Speaker 1: on a piece of paper from that time would be
Speaker 1: perfectly legible and well, it would be perfectly readable by
Speaker 1: handwriting analysis person um. But the thing is, if I
Speaker 1: wanted to read the file on that floppy disc number one,
Speaker 1: I would have to hope that the material, the magnetic medium,
Speaker 1: hadn't corrupted. You know, I'd become so brittle by this
Speaker 1: point that it is, uh, you know, unreadable. I would
Speaker 1: have funding to Megat to run it on. I would
Speaker 1: have funding to me with scribble on it, and it's
Speaker 1: rendered almost inaccessible. So yeah, it's so difficult to get to.
Speaker 1: Now the Internet has managed to take a lot of
Speaker 1: those concerns and kind of put them to the side,
Speaker 1: just from the sense that you can store things in
Speaker 1: the cloud now and even as as companies upgrade their
Speaker 1: cloud systems, they of course have to port old information over.
Speaker 1: I mean, if they can't, then they're going to go
Speaker 1: out of business. But that's expensive because it takes people
Speaker 1: to port that stuff over, and you also have to
Speaker 1: file formats and storage capacity and all that stuff. You know,
Speaker 1: It's it ain't cheap, right, But the point being that
Speaker 1: it is it is in fact possible for you to
Speaker 1: now store things electronically where you don't have to worry
Speaker 1: as much about the physical medium or the or the
Speaker 1: even the software um going bad on you. I think,
Speaker 1: especially when you have access to things like say Google
Speaker 1: Docs or the Microsoft Online Suite UM, those you know,
Speaker 1: usually build backwards compatibility into that, and even if the
Speaker 1: backwards compatibility starts to kind of slack off later on,
Speaker 1: they'll probably just go ahead and tweak it so that
Speaker 1: you can you can convert your files over into the
Speaker 1: proper format. But that that aside, I think just psychologically,
Speaker 1: there's an importance we put on things that are put
Speaker 1: on paper that we don't think of an electronic format um.
Speaker 1: And this is kind of armchair psychology. So I mean
Speaker 1: this is this is not based on anything scientific or
Speaker 1: any studies. This is Jonathan talking out of his own
Speaker 1: armchair psychology. Lazy boy. So, uh I see what you
Speaker 1: did there. Yeah, it's kind of hard to fit it
Speaker 1: in the office, and boy is it getting warm in here.
Speaker 1: But uh so, the armchair psychology approach is that when
Speaker 1: you have something written down on paper, it's it's got
Speaker 1: a physical presence, right. You can see it, you can
Speaker 1: touch it, you can pick it, you can wat it
Speaker 1: up if you want to. You can throw it away. Um,
Speaker 1: you can file it. You can tell your assistant to
Speaker 1: go and unfile it. Find that piece of paper that
Speaker 1: you've filed for no reason other than to make that
Speaker 1: person go and get it back for you because you're
Speaker 1: powerful man, Mr Executive. How you like me now, boss?
Speaker 1: Give me the Stevenson report. I think I think it
Speaker 1: went off on the rails on that one. But at
Speaker 1: any rate, the point being that it has that physicality
Speaker 1: to it, and that's that's an important factor. When you
Speaker 1: have an electronic file, you know you've got it. It
Speaker 1: doesn't it doesn't it feels like it doesn't really exist.
Speaker 1: You know, it exists on a computer screen. But once
Speaker 1: you turn your computer off, you don't have it in
Speaker 1: your hands anymore. You know, you have to have the
Speaker 1: computer onto or some other device, whether it's a Kindle
Speaker 1: or other e reader or a smartphone or whatever whatever
Speaker 1: it is you're using to access that file. Um, you
Speaker 1: know you have to have this other device on in
Speaker 1: order to access it. And it just doesn't feel like
Speaker 1: it's real, not like not like a piece of paper does. Now,
Speaker 1: if you can get over that, that's cool, But if
Speaker 1: you can't, then you're gonna be like a boss I
Speaker 1: had several years ago at a different company, and I'm
Speaker 1: not gonna name it, but I really did have a
Speaker 1: boss who would get maybe fifty or sixty emails in
Speaker 1: a day, and he printed every single one of them
Speaker 1: and then filed them away. Yeah. I know I know
Speaker 1: other people like that too, And uh, you know I
Speaker 1: know a lot of people two in places that I've worked, actually,
Speaker 1: very various companies from where I've worked, and I'll print
Speaker 1: something that I need and I'll walk over to the
Speaker 1: printer and it will be next to the Actually have
Speaker 1: mentioned this on the podcast before. For you long time
Speaker 1: listeners you will recognize this, But um, there there will
Speaker 1: be a stack of paper, you know, sometimes even you know,
Speaker 1: a whole pack worth of paper sitting next to the
Speaker 1: printer of jobs that people have printed but never claimed. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, so they people get it in their head
Speaker 1: that they need a copy of it, and they print
Speaker 1: it out, and then they forget that they actually needed it,
Speaker 1: and it turns out they didn't need it as bad
Speaker 1: badly as they thought. Well, what's funny because another one
Speaker 1: of the things too that I've read was an article
Speaker 1: in The Economist, um and in the eighties and nine nineties, UM,
Speaker 1: during the years when technology was really beginning to catch
Speaker 1: on and people started having a computer on their desk,
Speaker 1: uh sometimes at home too, especially in the early eighties.
Speaker 1: You know, that was a real novelty, UM for the
Speaker 1: early part of the decade. But consumption, you know, this
Speaker 1: is when theoretically the Office of the Future was going
Speaker 1: to start eliminating paper. But at that point, consumption of
Speaker 1: paper almost you know, more than doubled in those years
Speaker 1: because you know, once the Internet caught on, there was
Speaker 1: all this other information and people wanted copies of it. So,
Speaker 1: you know, in printers became really really good. Desktop publishing
Speaker 1: became a phenomenon and all of a sudden, we were
Speaker 1: printing way more than usual. But since two thousand one,
Speaker 1: apparently paper used to spend in decline um and seems
Speaker 1: like social factors may be partially responsible for that because
Speaker 1: people are growing up, they're they're used to the technology.
Speaker 1: Now I don't necessarily need to print the emails and
Speaker 1: file them away. People who have, you know, gone through
Speaker 1: school all the way through with you know, and they're
Speaker 1: used to do the computer and the internet, and they
Speaker 1: don't have to They just don't need to print stuff
Speaker 1: out like they used to. So it's it's starting to decline,
Speaker 1: but it's still it's definitely it's definitely a cultural thing.
Speaker 1: I think if I think as we go on, we
Speaker 1: will arrive at more of are less a paperless office
Speaker 1: kind of environment across most industries. Uh, mainly because by
Speaker 1: then it'll those industries will be staffed by people who
Speaker 1: grew up in that environment that you were talking about.
Speaker 1: For those of us who who came before, you know,
Speaker 1: we were just from a different time where it's a
Speaker 1: time from far past where we just are used to
Speaker 1: using paper and it's hard to get that. It's hard
Speaker 1: to to break free of that, which is why if
Speaker 1: you if you are a company and you're looking at
Speaker 1: um switching to a paperless environment, it really means changing
Speaker 1: more than just telling people not to print stuff. It
Speaker 1: means creating new organizational workflows. It really means rethinking the
Speaker 1: way you go about doing your daily job so that
Speaker 1: you don't have to rely on paper at all. UM.
Speaker 1: And it's more than just providing the tools. You have
Speaker 1: to provide the training, and you have to expect that
Speaker 1: there's gonna be a period where people have to learn
Speaker 1: these new these new behaviors. This is not what we're
Speaker 1: used to and UM, I think we will see that
Speaker 1: happen over time, but it's gonna be much more gradual
Speaker 1: than we expected because I think when people were making
Speaker 1: the predictions, they were thinking of it from a technological standpoint,
Speaker 1: like when will we be technologically able to abandon paper? Well,
Speaker 1: as it turns out that we were ready for that
Speaker 1: far before we were psychologically ready to do it. I
Speaker 1: could think of a number of different programs available right now,
Speaker 1: um commercially and as shareware that allow you to uh,
Speaker 1: you know, save different kinds of documents in them, so
Speaker 1: you can create a system inside the program for your
Speaker 1: Microsoft word documents and your rich text files and your
Speaker 1: audio files and PDFs and all kinds of things, and
Speaker 1: you can basically create a I mean, you could do
Speaker 1: the same thing essentially with a UM you know, with
Speaker 1: a simple organizational file in your operating system. But this
Speaker 1: pro the programs actually sort of put them together so
Speaker 1: that you have all the files in one place where
Speaker 1: you can view them inside the system. And that's it
Speaker 1: essentially achieves the same um the same idea of having
Speaker 1: them all in a file, a physical file folder. But
Speaker 1: you know, it does help people keep things organized and
Speaker 1: help you work without having to, you know, spread all
Speaker 1: that stuff out on your desk. However, spreading all that
Speaker 1: stuff out on your desk can be really helpful sometimes
Speaker 1: sometimes that that is, it's all easier to visualize the
Speaker 1: project when you actually have those physical pieces in front
Speaker 1: of you. Maybe something like the Microsoft Surface, you know,
Speaker 1: where you can we could have a screen, a large
Speaker 1: screen where you could you know, actually spread things out.
Speaker 1: Think about interoperability between say a computer and a tablet device,
Speaker 1: like if if you if Apple were to create uh
Speaker 1: an interoperable interface between the iPad and say their Macintosh line,
Speaker 1: and they were able to make it where it was
Speaker 1: really easy to do things like have one thing up
Speaker 1: on your IMAX screen while you're taking notes on your iPad,
Speaker 1: and it's all linked together so that if you ever
Speaker 1: open it up again, you have access to all of that.
Speaker 1: That would be brilliant. And then I would say, you know,
Speaker 1: before I kind of poo pooed the iPad um and
Speaker 1: and I think in its initial phase it's still not
Speaker 1: really for me. But seeing that kind of stuff built
Speaker 1: in over time, and I assume that that's going to
Speaker 1: eventually happen, if not with the iPad one point kind
Speaker 1: of yeah, some sort of tablet device, um, then I
Speaker 1: would say, yeah, you know, this totally makes sense because
Speaker 1: that's one of my problems is I like to take
Speaker 1: a lot of notes about the research I'm doing. Well,
Speaker 1: it's it's a lot easier if you are doing that
Speaker 1: on paper than if you're doing it on a screen,
Speaker 1: where like, if the resource material is on the screen,
Speaker 1: then you're either covering up part of the screen or
Speaker 1: you need two screens. And most of us here at
Speaker 1: how stuff works, we only have the one laptop. There
Speaker 1: are some of us who have multiple screens. I am
Speaker 1: not one of them. Uh, if I did on multiple screens,
Speaker 1: then I could have my notes up on one and
Speaker 1: I could have the research up on the other, it
Speaker 1: wouldn't be an issue. But like a tablet device could
Speaker 1: be helpful in that sense. Otherwise I'm using paper. Um,
Speaker 1: so yeah, there's that. And there's a lot of reasons
Speaker 1: why you would want to switch to a paperless office.
Speaker 1: I mean, first of all, it's the green thing to do.
Speaker 1: You're not consuming right, or at least you're not consuming paper,
Speaker 1: you're still consuming electricity. So and there's still other issues
Speaker 1: to take into account. But some people say that that
Speaker 1: paper is greener than electronics that but I've but I've
Speaker 1: seen I've seen some new material to from environmental groups
Speaker 1: that say, well, you know, with certain responsibly forested trees,
Speaker 1: with a higher recycled paper content, it can be have
Speaker 1: less of an impact on the environment, which is just
Speaker 1: hard for me to get my head around. But you
Speaker 1: would have to sort of understand what you have to
Speaker 1: be purchasing your paper from a very particular vendor, and
Speaker 1: I guarantee you it's going to be more expensive than
Speaker 1: the average REMA paper, yes, and probably more than a
Speaker 1: company wouldn't necessarily be willing to pay. But yeah, most
Speaker 1: companies are gonna look for the most cost effective way
Speaker 1: of purchasing anything well could otherwise it's hard to stay
Speaker 1: in business. But the the reasons why you want to
Speaker 1: go to paperless besides the whole green slash clean technology,
Speaker 1: It takes up less space, so that can save you
Speaker 1: money because now you're not you know, you might not
Speaker 1: need an office space as large as you would if
Speaker 1: you had a lot of paper files. I mean, I've
Speaker 1: worked in offices that had an entire room dedicated to
Speaker 1: paper files that with like multiple UH sliding shelves, like
Speaker 1: you'd have to turn a crank to move the shelf
Speaker 1: down the rooms we could get to the next shelf,
Speaker 1: and if if the information you needed was on the
Speaker 1: last shelf, was going to take you a while before
Speaker 1: you got there. Um, you wouldn't need that. With electronic
Speaker 1: electronic filing systems, everything would be on a server or
Speaker 1: two servers or a rack of servers whatever, you wouldn't.
Speaker 1: That takes up a lot less space than an entire
Speaker 1: room full of files and UH and like for very
Speaker 1: big companies that could that could mean the difference between
Speaker 1: a huge office and just a rather large office. Well,
Speaker 1: and and it's gonna be especially important in situations like
Speaker 1: the ones we're starting to encounter now in which more
Speaker 1: of us are working from home more of the time.
Speaker 1: I mean, there are companies who are taking the plunge
Speaker 1: and going completely decentralized. And if you have a lot
Speaker 1: of paper, uh, you know you have to have all
Speaker 1: the files. Well, what if somebody across town needs that?
Speaker 1: Are you going to pay a career? Are you're gonna
Speaker 1: run it over there yourself? Again, this is a higher
Speaker 1: environmental cost um and it's really really impractical, you know,
Speaker 1: rather than sharing the files electronically in some fashion. So, um,
Speaker 1: you know now that that more companies are becoming comfortable
Speaker 1: allowing their employees to work remotely carrying around a lot
Speaker 1: of paper in a briefcase or backpacker a truck, it's
Speaker 1: kind of it's kind of uh, really difficult to imagine
Speaker 1: at this point. The nice thing about where we work
Speaker 1: is that there's not a lot of call for us
Speaker 1: to print paper. Most of the things that we do
Speaker 1: we can do electronically at this point. Um, it may
Speaker 1: mean logging into three separate log in systems in order
Speaker 1: to get to the electronic form, these things happen. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but yeah, that that does happen, but it still means
Speaker 1: you don't need paper for it. So that's kind of nice. Um.
Speaker 1: But will we get to a paperless office environment? Probably,
Speaker 1: but it'll be a generational thing, not a not a
Speaker 1: technology thing. Yeah. I think we'll probably get to a
Speaker 1: very very minimal paper office. It just doesn't sound nearly
Speaker 1: as cool as paperless, right, And I mean, I remember
Speaker 1: when I was took my first computer class. I was like, yeah, totally,
Speaker 1: we're not gonna have any paper anymore. Yeah, And now
Speaker 1: I'm like, hey, where to put that piece of paper
Speaker 1: with that extremely funny and important note I wrote on it? Yeah?
Speaker 1: And where are you gonna put that password? Yea, stick
Speaker 1: it on your computer monitor. I always end up putting
Speaker 1: it on a little post it note, And then I
Speaker 1: just put it on Sarah Dowdy's back, and then I
Speaker 1: come by and say, hey, how are you doing? All right?
Speaker 1: That's how I log in. She hates that, by the way.
Speaker 1: Meanwhile she peels it off and goes one six Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: last word, why is the word password on my back?
Speaker 1: I never shut up. I never claimed to be smart,
Speaker 1: all right, So well, that's that's a good discussion on
Speaker 1: the paperless office in it. And now we will move
Speaker 1: on to a little listener mail. This strom mail comes
Speaker 1: from Lisa, and Lisa says chris P. I thought it
Speaker 1: was crispy until Jonathan explained in the later podcast. And Jonathan,
Speaker 1: I just want you guys to know how much I
Speaker 1: love and enjoy your podcast. I travel all over Florida
Speaker 1: for my job, so I plug in my eye touch
Speaker 1: and listen to you. I learned so much and you
Speaker 1: always managed to a listen to smile from me as well.
Speaker 1: I also want to mention that I love it when
Speaker 1: Jonathan says, oh, listener mail, I love that. I have
Speaker 1: so many things I'd like to hear on your podcast,
Speaker 1: but one that often comes up because I'm always looking
Speaker 1: for directions is how does Google get the street views
Speaker 1: on Google Maps? Thanks and keep up the great work, Lisa. Well, Lisa,
Speaker 1: thank you so much. It was a very nice email
Speaker 1: to receive, especially after a very long and hectic week
Speaker 1: in a very hot studio room. Yes, I am getting
Speaker 1: to the point where I am in fact crispy. Yes,
Speaker 1: yes I'm kind of getting soggy. But let's just move
Speaker 1: on and answer your your question there about street you, Well,
Speaker 1: we talked about street you in a previous podcast. Not well,
Speaker 1: it was actually quite a while ago. But street view
Speaker 1: is it's a pretty simple and and brilliant idea. What
Speaker 1: do you do is you get a car or in
Speaker 1: some cases a trike or maybe even a bicycle, but
Speaker 1: mostly cars, and you put on top of it four
Speaker 1: cameras panoramic cameras, so yeah, wide angle cameras pointing one
Speaker 1: essentially north, southeast, and west, but really in the four
Speaker 1: main directions radiating out from the roof of the vehicle. Yeah.
Speaker 1: There their photos of this, ironically enough online and you
Speaker 1: can see it essentially looks like a periscope on a submarine.
Speaker 1: It's a mass with the four cameras mountain on it,
Speaker 1: and they're digital cameras. They're taking Hiro's photos and they
Speaker 1: take them at a pretty short interval. Um. I'm not
Speaker 1: sure if it's timed or if it's actually distance now
Speaker 1: that I think about it, but they are GEO tagged.
Speaker 1: There's a GPS receiver in with the vehicle and it
Speaker 1: tags each photo with a compass as well, So there's
Speaker 1: a GPS tag and a compass heading for each photo
Speaker 1: so that it knows how to orient them when putting
Speaker 1: them together in street view. So when it's all put
Speaker 1: together in street view, it kind of looks like a
Speaker 1: seamless experience. Like you can you can scan down the
Speaker 1: street and travel down the street as if you were
Speaker 1: actually in the town. Um that's all because of these
Speaker 1: these photos. Now, however, if you do take a turn
Speaker 1: and you start moving around, you might notice that the
Speaker 1: time of day looks a little different, or maybe the
Speaker 1: maybe it's not as sunny as it used to being
Speaker 1: because it takes a while to scan these streets, and
Speaker 1: depending on traffic and things like that, it can take
Speaker 1: a long time. So Google sends these vehicles through, takes
Speaker 1: all these photos and then assembles them and uh and
Speaker 1: and attaches them to Google Maps because of the using
Speaker 1: the geo tagging feature. Um there are This is not
Speaker 1: without controversy. There There have been a few towns that
Speaker 1: have protested the use of of street view saying that
Speaker 1: it it's a violation of privacy and that it endangers
Speaker 1: people in the town because, uh, it could it could
Speaker 1: serve as a way for thieves to case a joint.
Speaker 1: That's what we call it. When we UH I mean
Speaker 1: when thieves look at houses and try to find a
Speaker 1: vulnerable way in. Um. It also could capture people in
Speaker 1: unflattering situations such as coming out of of the Cheetah,
Speaker 1: which only a few people are going to actually know.
Speaker 1: But listen, don't look it up. Don't look it up.
Speaker 1: It's a look. It's an exotic dancing location within Atlanta,
Speaker 1: And the only reason I know that it exists is
Speaker 1: because I used to work there block away from there,
Speaker 1: and um so if you know, you wouldn't want to
Speaker 1: the Google. You wouldn't want to be walking out of
Speaker 1: there and see the Google car going by at that
Speaker 1: moment and think, great, my picture is gonna be on
Speaker 1: Google street View forever. So that's why the Google street
Speaker 1: View Now they have an automatic UH algorithm that will
Speaker 1: blur out people's faces so that their identities remain somewhat secret. Um.
Speaker 1: But there are other issues as well. In fact, Google
Speaker 1: has has mentioned not that long ago that they were
Speaker 1: thinking about letting communities know when they were going to
Speaker 1: send a car through. And when you think about at first,
Speaker 1: you're like, oh, that's a great idea because I can
Speaker 1: make sure that my my lawn is his mode. So
Speaker 1: it doesn't look nasty, and that that you know, the
Speaker 1: houses in good shapes. So that way, if the if
Speaker 1: I ever do decide to sell my house and someone
Speaker 1: looks at my house and street view, it's not gonna
Speaker 1: look like a you know, a ramshackle hut. But other
Speaker 1: people are thinking, hey, this is great because if I
Speaker 1: know they're going to be going through, I can arrange
Speaker 1: a really funny tableau and uh and mess with Google
Speaker 1: and have like this goofy scene play out as the
Speaker 1: Google street view UH car goes by. Because this has
Speaker 1: happened before with some art project type stuff. I can
Speaker 1: just imagine the entire world turning into an enormous art project,
Speaker 1: which in my view is totally awesome. But other people say,
Speaker 1: well that kind of reduces the usefulness of the actual tool.
Speaker 1: Um that more than answers that question. I think Chris
Speaker 1: has been quiet ever since I talked about the cheetah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm wondering in the paperless office if I should tender
Speaker 1: my resignation on paper. I think you can do it
Speaker 1: by email or even text message. You know what, I'm
Speaker 1: going to tweet it when I'm out of here. I'm
Speaker 1: tweeting it. You heard it here first, so I accept
Speaker 1: that for the fact that I'm following in the footsteps
Speaker 1: of of people who are like C. E O S
Speaker 1: who have used Twitter to Yeah. Well, at any rate,
Speaker 1: thank you for the question. If any of you have
Speaker 1: any similar questions or just you're curious about something or
Speaker 1: you want to add to our discussion, please email us
Speaker 1: text stuff at how stuff works dot com. Remember you
Speaker 1: can check out our blogs. Those are at blogs dot
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com, and of course the website itself,
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot Com still an awesome resource. And
Speaker 1: you know what, you don't even need paper to look
Speaker 1: at it. Nope, and Chris and I will talk to
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