Another Exhilarating Dispatch from the Fake-Crisis Management Center

Another reason that so many Europeans need to get a life:

Last week Google Street View went online in Germany, after which isolated Google fans threw raw eggs at pixelated buildings in Essen. Enno Park defends people's wish to protect their private sphere in Blog Carta. "Street View is Google, no more and no less. Google can manipulate the service as it likes, make it payable or even take it off the Web. Of course building facades are public and can be seen by everyone, but that doesn't change the fact that these images may lead people to draw true or false inferences about my person - especially in small towns and detached house neighbourhoods. ... Now the pixelators are under general suspicion of having something to hide and are already being called crackpots, squares, sticks-in-the-mud and even fascists. Nevertheless it is precisely in its dealings with such Street View opponents that our Web culture shows itself for what it is. ... If we netizens can't come to terms with the Street View 'dissidents', then we are the ones who aren't ready for Street View."

That’s what dissent and argumentative debate have now boiled down to in the strange little world of their zeitgeists.