by Oliver Fischer
There are several stereotypes about Germans. It seems that to the rest of the world, we are some efficient, beer-drinking and sauerkraut-eating guys with no sense of humour who wear leather trousers all the time. (Just to sort this out – I don’t even posses leather trousers but the part about the beer is right…)
During this year’s silly season, I had to learn that there is another stereotype I hadn’t heard of before: The German Angst. This phrase was often used over the past month in German newspapers, online magazines and blogs when discussing Google Street View.
It’s true, many Germans are afraid of Google Street View. Although, in my opinion, this was not caused by the “typical German” suspicion of modern technology, but rather by rumours, half truths and ignorance. Common arguments were (and still are), “It can’t be legal for Google to put a picture of my house / car / lawn gnome on the internet!” (Yes, it is.) Or “Burglars are using Street View to spy out my house!” (No, they are not.)
As you see, from the very beginning, the discussion about Street View in Germany was a bit odd. But at some point it became absurd. For example, a newspaper interviewed Street View opponents, not only giving their full name but also illustrating the article online with a picture of them – in front of their houses. Also, I don’t know if in their fight against Google these people realised that their houses can already be seen online via a German portal called Sightwalk. Or, that the online phone book of the Deutsche Telekom provides the interested user with your address, your phone number – and with a bird’s-eye view not only of the front of your house , but also quite a nice look at the backyard. But this rather funny story was followed by some even more irrational episodes, like the chairman of the German Police Union talking about virtual police patrols via Street View or a feuilleton commentator complaining that it would destroy the fantasy of the reader if they could see James Joyce’s Dublin through the “worm’s-eye view of the Google cameras” (this leads us to the question of how Google got the 10-feet-high worms and the pictures of Dublin from 1904).
Nearly every blogger and commentator finally tried to provide a theory about why Street View caused so much confusion in Germany and many of them referred to the German Angst or the distrust Germans have when it’s about their private data.
Well, I think they are wrong. So I’ve come up with my very own – and in my opinion absolutely logical – theory about it: it’s all about the political buzz word that nearly became a nickname for Google in Germany: the Data Kraken! And everybody knows that Germans are seriously out of sorts with kraken since the last Football World Cup.
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