This land is your land, this land is my land
Woody Guthrie
From California to the New York Island …
Google Trespasses
We all know the words. And the tune. As teenagers, many of us could pick it out on the guitar. And we’ve heard it so many times that most of us are very ho-hum about it. But the lyrics are simple and truly beautiful from beginning to end. It was and is a very popular song. It is also one that riles me no end. My irritation reflects the era in which I live and the mentality I developed as a result. To carp at just two points: First of all, it most certainly is not our land. Second of all, look what we’ve done to it. To hear those lyrics crowing self-righteously over our so-called possession sickens me.
But the song was written by a man with a different sense of what is mine and what is yours. Instead of expressing possession, I believe Woody Guthrie meant to emphasize sharing, a huge difference. Sadly, the sense of sharing has waned since 1940 when he wrote the song. Few of us cherish the feeling of being all together in one big boat. It’s a dinghy. We’re keenly aware of that. And the idea of sharing in a dinghy makes us edgy. So, while Woody’s song may have stirred admirable sentiments in 1940, for later generations it plucks bitter notes that ring of prodigality, greed, and ego.
Time marches on. Our sense of sharing wizens, our hypertrophic notion of possession discovers a toe we would never have known it had except that, as happens, someone stepped on it. This is what I call “jurisprudential dialectic.” Marx would have called it something else, I am sure, just to be contrary, and Hegel would have contradicted him, so I feel quite comfortable with my term. It happened this way: Google launched Street View, our legal apparatus judged it to be a violation of personal privacy, and so now we know: we are our possessions, that is to say, our possessions are us, that is to say, publishing pictures of our property without our permission violates our personal privacy. This effectively extends human identity to what we own, and it could get very crowded in our little boat indeed. This also obliges us to alter the words to Woody’s theme song slightly: This house is my house, that house is your house. Known as a cantankerous contender, Google accepted the pronouncement.
I know why they passed the judgment. They deemed users of Google Street View spies. Now, calling us that would certainly be slanderous, and I don’t think they’ve gone that far; they’ve got enough legal threads to weave into magic carpets as it is. And, of course, we aren’t spies. If I have an appointment somewhere I’ve never been before, and if I’m nervous about getting there on time, and if it’s important enough that I don’t want to appear nervous when I do get there, I find it a tremendous help to use that street view to get a look at the building, the area, and the way there. It orients me, which boosts my confidence, and that calms me down. Yes, I am scouting out the area, but for a clearly useful and very constructive purpose, which cannot be considered spying, I don’t think. Yet, there are burglars in this world. There are terrorists. There are—most loathsome of all—kidnappers. And such people could find Street View very useful.
That, I imagine, is why this privacy issue came up. Property owners don’t want to give anyone the chance to case the joint without their knowing about it. If you want to size up a place, you’re going to have show your mug to do it. And while you’re casing the joint, believe me, they are casing you. An experience I had a few years ago serves as harsh example.
I was back in the Burg, as they call it—my hometown of Pittsburgh, PA—on an all-too-infrequent visit. (I manage to return once a year if I’m lucky, and well organized, and I seldom am.) As I so enjoy doing when I’m there, I was taking a long walk along the beautiful suburban roads of the area in which my father lives. Our tiny node of the McCutcheon dynasty centers in O’Hara Township, a very pleasant township. But O’Hara borders on Fox Chapel Borough, a residential area that, to my urban dweller’s eyes, is spectacularly affluent. The homes are large (or larger) and opulent, the grounds generous, the properties breathtakingly nestled amid gorgeous gardens, the degree of luxury just about as high as it could go without being fatal.
Way back when, we children of the township roamed far and wide—throughout the township, into the borough, and back again, traversing properties of value that would have made our parents faint. Our objective and playground and joy and glory were the woods that surrounded those neighborhoods, and the woods were deep. We were very lucky youngsters.
The memories of those times have shaped my imagination, informed my sense of personal freedom, and downsized, by the way, my assessment of my personal potential; engage in full battle at twelve with a mighty beech tree and you gauge your powers differently afterwards. Those memories still charge my blood with the excitement of coursing through untamed nature on the lookout for adventure, of dueling till death when we found it—until sundown, that is, when we, tousled but obedient, returned home for dinner. Only the fringes of those woods remain today, and only in some places, but that fringe stirs the memory of those days of marauding Davy Crocketts braving all in merry, deep, dangerous forest fairylands.
On this particular walk, I noticed a narrow asphalt road that was new to me. It curved steeply up and into a section of woodland—still intact, it appeared—that just might take me across to where the County Farm used to be, a heavenly haven on warm Spring afternoons for us kids to lounge drowsily in apple trees like a troop of monkeys and lose ourselves in contemplation of nothing more and nothing less than pure sky and the huge, white clouds that drifted majestically across it. Now an industrial park, that territory must lie, it occurred to me, in just the direction in which that modest road seemed to be heading. Curious about my assessment of the layout of the former kingdom, I struck out on the road to see.
After climbing just a short distance, I was indeed enclosed in the generous woodlands of former times. To the left of the road, the grade fell abruptly and steeply into a ravine, a drop so characteristic of the woodlands of that area. Although it was early Summer, the woodland ground was covered in a deep blanket of leaves that had accumulated year in and year out, season upon season, the upper layer crisp and dusty, the lower depths moist and in the fragrant process of returning to the earth. I spied deer and thereafter took care to walk stealthily, hoping to catch sight of them again.
At very occasional intervals I spied the reason for the road: unusual, sizeable residences tucked away in the billowing folds of that wooded landscape. As I finally approached the crest of the long, rather steep incline, the road forked. On the right side of the right-hand fork was a tennis court. Beyond that, I caught a glimpse of what appeared to be a huge clubhouse, but which I well knew was a private residence. On the left-hand fork, there was nothing to see but the continuing swell of a clearing that looked very County Farm–like to me. My pulse quickened. A sense of its meadows, majesty, and generous sky was upon me.
And so was the auto that had just come up from behind, a woman returning to her home just over that rise, I supposed. She slowed as she passed me. I smiled and waved. She stopped a little beyond me and waited until I reached her car. As I did, she hummed down the window to ask me what I wanted. Well, I thought, that’s taking quite a folksy interest in my endeavors. I replied that I was looking for the shortcut to the County Farm. County Farm? she countered; never heard of it. No, I thought, you wouldn’t have; you’re not from here; you know nothing about this area; you bought a house and moved here, that’s all.
Despite the fact that she had never heard of the County Farm, she asserted that this was not the way. She hesitated for the briefest moment. I shouldn’t be up here, she pointed out. I was on a private road. Keenly aware of what she was driving at, I obediently turned and retraced my steps, marveling still at the views to the left and right of me of the bountiful, unspoiled woods that were now, apparently, hers. She had no idea what mythical grounds she now possessed. She could not hear the cries and the laughter, the calls and the chases, the shriek of sled riders and whispered melodrama of kid adventurers as they probed the deep-most secrets of suburban wilderness; she was deaf to the echoes of the bubbling spirits of the scores of children who had these past fifty years inhabited those woodlands, and through their imagination, energy, and awe, instilled them with magic. It was hers now and, with that takeover, dead.
Yes, Woody’s song was more about the children sharing than a woman owning those woodlands. But the taint of the latter has prevailed, receiving yet another confirmation with Google’s rap on the knuckles. Once again our world of rabid free enterprise has ratcheted up the status of the property owner a notch and scooted the propertyless citizen further into a corner. Crazy Ludwig built himself a stupendous castle called Neuschwanstein from money amassed from value created by us, and he can now legally block us from scrutinizing his booty in person or through images. Replace the name “Crazy Ludwig” with “Emperor Murdoch” and the situation takes a sinister turn. What if Meister Murdoch manages to buy the coast of France? Cover your faces.