Slashdot Mirror
Google's Streetview Seen As Culturally Insensitive In Japan
Jim O'Connell writes "Global Voices has a translation of an excellent open letter to Google by Osamu Higuchi, explaining that Street view is too invasive for Japanese traditional values when used in residential areas.
Having lived here for ten years, most recently in an older residential area, I can attest to its accuracy — Living in such close proximity to your neighbors, it becomes necessary to 'not look' at everything that you might be able see from a place such as the street, where you may have a legal right to be. The cultural boundaries are simply different than those of the US."
I don't know that what google is doing is taboo seeing as they are a technology in this case not a person.
If it's taboo to spy on your neighbors then don't use Google's street view. Or at the very least keep the view centered on the road.
You can't claim "the photo made you look". It's like child pornography. The fact that it exists does not force you to go download it. If you find it impolite to look at people's houses... don't look at people's houses. I'm going to let those who find the images offensive in on a little secret: nothing is stopping some insensitive smeghead from just driving down your street and staring at your house.
My view on all this? The Googmobile drove past work this last week and I hung out the window and waved.
And it applies to many other places in the world too.
Maybe time for Google to be a bit more careful about what they look at.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
They do sort of have addresses, but it's by subdivision of block. As an example, a particular Hostel I was at was at "Shinjuku-ku, 5-2 Katamachi"
So to find it you need to go to the Shinjuku area of Tokyo, and then look for the Katamachi block, then find sub-block 5, and then it's the 2nd building in that section. Luckily for me the search space wasn't that large, but it's still definitely a two dimensional search rather than a one dimensional search...
View Map
yours,
kbs
Speaking as an American who grew up in America, married to a Japanese woman, and lived in Tokyo for two years while going to animation school, going through these street views is pretty spooky. I feel like a ghost freely walking along the streets, watching old haunts of a place I once knew and felt at home. It's two AM in the morning, so my wife is asleep, but I can't wait until she wakes up and I can show her the parent's house!
What this really reminds us of is that meatspace is fundamentally different from cyberspace. On the net, we've evolved the ROBOTS.TXT for just this problem, and everybody agrees that websites aren't private by default, unless the owners explicitly say so. Google is a net company, and views the world as if it was an extension of the internet.
But the real world is not like the net, and in the real world the ROBOTS.TXT convention is inverted: the onus is not on the people to inform Google which data is out of bounds, instead the onus is on Google to ask every possible person which data is public. As a result, Google's company culture is fundamentally ill suited for meatspace information gathering.
The streetview example is only one of a long line of self inflicted troubles Google has brought upon itself. Here are some other examples:
When Google started scanning books and offering them online, it was behaving like a net company, assuming that if it went to a library, everything was available to them unless specifically prohibited, just like on a website. But the real world doesn't work like the web, and Google got sued by publishers. The correct approach was to ask the publishers for permission, for each and every book.
When Google started offering news stories written by others online, it was behaving like a net company, assuming that if it's on somebody's website, they can use it unless the ROBOTS.TXT says otherwise. But in the real world, those websites were only licensed to display syndicated news stories from the big organizations (Reuters, AP, AFP,...), and Google got rightly sued. The correct approach was for Google to license the material from Reuters, AP, AFP etc. themselves, before showing the material to their users.
When Google stated that Gmail wouldn't necessarily delete peoples' emails even if they shut their accounts, they got in trouble. In the real world, emails are considered private by most people, and just because they use Google's service doesn't mean they want Google to keep everything.
These examples show that Google's netroots are both an advantage (when competing in net technologies) and also a disadvantage (when trying to enter markets where the internet rules don't map well to reality). The world is more complex than what Google's management thinks.
In Soviet Russia, the street views YOU. Seriously though, I completely agree with this letter. My wife is Japanese and has been living here in the Bay Area for 5 years. She's pretty accustomed to American life, but as soon as I showed the Street View Japan, she went silent and then said something like, "No. no no no, this is bad. Not in Japan. No way." And her friends feel exactly the same way. It really is a cultural difference, and Google really is asking for a world of hurt here. What is astounding is that they pretty much did *all* of Tokyo. Look at how much of that map is blue. Did it occur to them to try it out in a small area to see how the Japanese would react? To me, this reeks of extreme hubris on Google's part.
Since when are the Japanese sensitive about photographing private residential areas!?
I live in the Weststadt residential neighborhood of Heidelberg, Germany. Heidelberg is a beautiful city, and sees many tourists. For some reason, the Japanese tour groups frequently travel down my street. Also, for some reason, many of the older Japanese tourists frequently take pictures of me doing such mundane things as bringing home groceries. I find it amusing that I am probably in several dozen Japanese photo albums, probably entitled "typical German going to the grocery store." I find it especially amusing, because I am an expatriate American, not a German.
In any case, is it typical for the Japanese to consider their own residential neighborhood private, but everyone else's to be public?
After I had read the original article I wondered what impulse would be the stronger among the slashdot crowd: the Google-is-god/f***-the-world or the respect-other-cultures impulse. There appears to be ample evidence of both here.
So I wonder if the Google-can-do-no-harm crowd can recall their Star Trek franchise, and if they are prepared to consider whether the Prime Directive of any decent group (society, country, company) should be: "don't interfere".
That includes, as far as I remember, to repect the whishes of a society to be left alone, in general and in Street View.
Yup...
Few things will irk the average japaneese more than invasion of privacy.
This is a country and culture so different from occidental ones that they tend to have no locks in their rooms because nobody would imagine entering without knocking, where people police each other in the subway so that you dont scream or make any kind of fuss that might irk the guy next to you.
I admire that part of their culture very much because its clearly a civilizatory trend: it makes people very councious about the rights of the next guy: its an insular culture ripe for pure individual freedom at its best.
Interestingly enough, their rigid social side follows very clear rules and is never very personal: the japaneese keep their inner self... erm.. to themselves.
I like that a lot.
NO SIG
I use it all the time for work. It augments the directions they give you , and gives you an idea of what the place you're looking for looks like. The pictures are taken from the street, so I won't see anything on street view that I wont see later when I'm driving down the street. If the cultural norm is not to look in certain places, why can't you just not look there in the google pictures?
I was putting together a photo-log of monitoring wells the other day, and I needed a picture that I'd forgotten to take while I was in the field. Rather than go back out just for one stupid picture than no one is probably even going to look at, I went on street view and got the picture. It is very useful, and I don't see how it is realistically an invasion of privacy. It is obviously intended to give people a general idea of how landmarks in the street will appear, and it is really too low-resolution to be used for anything else.
Try being 6'4" with blond hair and green eyes walking the crowded streets of Tokyo. People would come up to me and feel the hair on my arms. They seem to be utterly fascinated with anyone that has any kind of body hair. I guess hairy freaks aren't allowed any kind of personal space.
Large groups of people, mostly kids and teenagers, would crowd around me and want to have their picture taken. It was just as bad in the Philippines, if not worse.
I'm glad I don't travel anymore.
There, like here, they'd have to come on to private property to take pictures with any effect. If I see a Google truck/car/van then you can pretty much rest assured that they've violated the law so much that they are going to have issues. (It is not a simple matter of turning around, they can take pictures of anything they can see from the legal road all that they want and I won't mind a bit but they'll never actually make it here.)
Culture vs. law.... If it isn't illegal than that culture should have passed laws to protect itself or should enlist the government's aide in ensuring their values are maintained. If that means enacting laws to restrict this in the future and even retroactively have the practiced banned then they should do so.
Not all cultures are the same and, really, they don't need to be. If they were then where would be the culture?
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
That's part of the *culture*. And while there is certainly plenty to see if you pry, the cultural etiquette is to not overtly look in on your neighbors and certainly not to photograph people in their private lives. This is indeed a cultural difference, whether you like it or not. The analogy would be you suddenly photograph and blog your neighbors and the local onsen. Try that for a while and get back to us on how well it works out for you.
"Culture vs. law.... If it isn't illegal than that culture should have passed laws to protect itself "
;).
;)...
Well maybe that's not the culture to do that in Japan
Seriously, in most countries there are plenty of unwritten rules.
In Japan I believe you're not supposed to eat while walking about on the street.
And in most (all?) countries, I believe it's the unwritten rule that you are supposed to face the doorway in an elevator, not put your back to the doorway and smile at everyone
If you're an alien from another world (or an observant human) you'll see plenty of interesting unwritten rules.
Nobody writes all of them down.
It should not be illegal to break those rules once in a while, but if you keep doing that, you're being an asshole.
It's not illegal to be an asshole in most countries. Do we make it illegal to be an asshole?
I don't think that's such a good idea. I'm sure most of us have been assholes a few times in our lives.
To me, a country with a high proportion of persistent and unrepentant assholes shows a failure of society/culture, to outlaw "behaving like an asshole" is not addressing the real problem - many will remain assholes and just behave "almost but not quite an asshole" in legal terms.
Here in Europe, this feeling of privacy is much stronger than in Japan.
Apparently, you don't know Japan very well. I not only have lived here for over 14 years but am married to a Japanese woman and have 3 kids. It may surprise you to know that the word for privacy in Japanese is...puraibashi. "Why is that" you ask? In Japan there really wasn't any real concept of privacy before Japan started becoming westernized. So to say that privacy is big here is just bullshit. All your neighbors here are always knee deep in your shit (most people can't help it because they are only centimeters away from their neighbors). Privacy has only recently become big here with big companies sharing your personal information with others. Companies can even be certified that they will keep your personal information secret. Other than that, in your personal life, here in Japan privacy doesn't exist.
That's an excellent letter. According to the author, residential streets in Japan are treated as a "common area" - i.e., they're used for excess storage, the residents feel it's their responsibility for cleaning/snow-shoveling, etc, and (the funniest, but also most telling part), apparently old dudes hang out there wearing nothing but underwear.
The issue is something that anyone, anywhere, regardless of "culture," understands: There exist places where the line between "public" and "private" are slightly blurred - in the states, this might be a row of adjoining, unfenced backyards, or maybe an apartment common area, etc. Anyhow it's not a matter of "culture", it's a matter of geography and population density. Put Americans or Europeans in high density, tiny houses with tiny streets, and see what happens (my guess, the same).
I've lived in Japan for 7+ years. I have blond hair and blue eyes.
One thing you have to understand about the Japanese is that the majority of them divide the world into two groups: Japanese and others. They CONSTANTLY bring up the fact that I'm a foreigner, even when it has no bearing whatsoever on the situation. They also frequently tell me that they can/can't do something because they are Japanese.
I've been asked by children if I'm a person or not. When I say "yes" they respond matter-of-factly that I can't be a person, because I have blue eyes. People have brown eyes.
Yes, because we always need more laws to protect culture. See banning gay marriage for example. In fact, cultural beliefs should almost be banned from law for this type of reason. I mean, imagine how great society would be if we banned sex before marriage, maybe even tacked on the death penalty for it. You know, like all of those theological nightmare countries that do that now to protect their culture.
You do understand that our nation is so completely and totally fucked up right now because of people like you demanding that the government "should do something about that". Our society has given up all of its responsibility and demand that someone else (government) take care of them in all aspects of their life. So as long as you will stand there and say government should do something...you have no right to bitch when government does things you don't like. Government was supposed to have limited power and we fucked it up severely.
The only change I can believe in is what I find in my couch cushions.
Put Americans or Europeans in high density, tiny houses with tiny streets, and see what happens (my guess, the same).
My guess, very different. Put Americans and/or Europeans in a similar situation and I can guarantee the murder rate will go way up ("Hey! Stop looking at my wife, asshole!") Whether or not the Japanese like their lifestyle, or whether they simply accept it, is nothing I can comment upon. That they have adapted to it in ways that would be utterly foreign to most Westerners and Europeans is pretty obvious.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.