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Call me old fashioned, but can anyone remember when the best way to see a city was by going to it? You know, buying the guide book, trying to understand the tube map, seeing the sights. Having a panic attack in some random marketplace where you are totally lost which inevitably leads to the epiphany moment when you realise that you are totally different from any other tourist ever and throwing away the guidebook and ‘getting to know the real city’

Well with the arrival of Google Street View it appears that all that is just not necessary, launched amid a dark cloud of controversy and scandal, street view provides the cyber addict with the tools to ‘walk’ around a city and see all the glorious things it has to offer without ever having to leave that comforting warm glow of the monitor and having to, you know. Go outside. For example yesterday I walked up the length of 5th Avenue in Manhattan from the comfort of my Peckham abode, so, hurrah! no need to travel there now. Might head over to San Francisco next.

Of course it is pretty much limited to urban areas but I truly believe it is only a matter of time before it is possible to hike around the Himalayas, scale the North Pole, explore the Inca Temples and trek through the Amazon rainforest all as if you were really there. I can’t be the only person who thinks that this is terrible, surely! The internet is a fantastical example of technology replacing any need to ever interact socially, using it, one can shop, chat to ‘friends’ keep up with current events, watch films that have only just hit the cinemas, listen to and download the latest music. There is a shrinking percentage of things that give our life some semblance of meaning that can be done without it being replaced by some internet site, and now its taking travel from us too! Because the point of travel is seeing stuff you have never seen before, you wouldn’t pay to see a movie you have already seen or go to the shop that’s all the way on the other side of town when you can browse their merchandise online, so why bother going to New York when you have already seen the entire city! Even the galleries of New York have the majority of their exhibitions online, all you gotta do then is make yourself a coffee in a novelty sized teacup with big red spots all over it and you are all set.

Now, some may argue that street view is a vital tool one can utilise when trying to find a specific building or address, which is fair enough because obviously before the internet map craze none of us ever found anything ever, and were all just wandering around aimlessly with dumb luck being our only hope of meeting a mate for a pint or getting to a job interview or putting out a fire. Thank goodness for Google otherwise our society would never be the organised, well-oiled machine that it is now.

So come on cyber community ditch Google get out an A to Z and leave your house, before its too late………..