Just "walked" ~ 'arrowed' on my computer keyboard ~ down the Harbin Springs' road from the Harbin Gatehouse to the new Middletown Library ...


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Google Earth - great - just updated toward interactive movie realism and as virtual Harbin ethnographic field site - http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/search/label/ethno-wiki-virtual-world-graphy…


https://twitter.com/scottmacleod/status/605791986210054144


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To Watsu water shiatsu wiki subject at WUaS - http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/Watsu_-_water_shiatsu ? Just walked down Harbin Road from the gate



https://twitter.com/WorldUnivandSch/status/605815898100793345


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See, too, this interesting Lego-virtual world development re the actual and the virtual, an important aspect of my Harbin ethnographic book manuscript ....


Added this article -
http://thenextweb.com/apps/2015/06/01/lego-launches-its-minecraft-competitor/ -
to Virtual Worlds at WUaS -
http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/Virtual_Worlds -
and tried to add it too to the "Lego section" at Robotics - http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/Robotics - at WUaS, but couldn't because the Robotics page was locked (about 5 -10 pages have been locked on and off in the past year or two).

https://twitter.com/WorldUnivandSch/status/605423288995618816

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Some field notes from walking down the Harbin Springs' road from the Harbin gate in the newly updated Google Earth ...


- It was cool and beautiful ... tiles of pictures filled in the virtual Harbin Springs' road as it unfolded before me ... and these tiles of pictures eventually could become real time video as well. I liked the sense of journey, of being on the road and of kind of walking - traveling - along the beautiful Harbin road in this virtual world.

- You can walk down this road too. Begin here:

The Harbin Gatehouse:

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Harbin+Hot+Springs/@38.785962,-122.651913,3a,75y,3.07h,90t/data=!3m4!1e1!3m2!1sZvCvdrcS5wPenGS_nB4JtA!2e0!4m2!3m1!1s0x0:0xde57c3ab0ecaa2c9!6m1!1e1

- In Google Earth, I just learned one can add public photos to the already existing Harbin Hot Springs' photos (see link for the Harbin Gatehouse above - and add a public Harbin photo). Glad too, for research reasons, that these Google Earth links are 'absolute' and take you to the specific place - and probably with different historic photos depending on the links. When will these Google Earth tiled photos become film realistic, live, 3D and interactive?

- But the first thing I tried to do was to enter in this virtual world into the Harbin Hot Springs in order to head up to the springs passing all the Harbin buildings in unfolding pictures of Google Earth ... but Google Earth wouldn't let me go past the Harbin gate house. In actuality, Harbin both doesn't allow photos on property usually, and it costs to go into Harbin (and it isn't possible to pay in Google Earth either at this point), and although I've certainly noted in my field notes the sensibleness of asking money to go into Harbin (while also, on the other hand, creating a free open CC wiki-viable version) in a virtual earth and have been hoping Google Earth would make virtual Harbin which I could then do field work in and over the years for actual/virtual ethnographic comparison, I also appreciate the Rainbow Gathering's "All Ways Free" approach, a kind of hippie / New Age philosophy emerging from the 1960s forward - and which ethos informs Harbin too - but which hasn't played out on the ground at Harbin (which makes too for a fascinating set of narratives and analyses and social theory), but which free-ethos has played out on the ground at the Rainbow Gatherings (and they both started in 1972 - at Harbin when Ishvara bought the property - and which as a starting year is significant in my ethnography).

- So questions of how Harbin, and as Hearth Consciousness Church (I just ran out of the 200 character space to add this HCC blog label in my blogspot "Labels"), and Google, and capitalism and political economic social theory (e.g. Marxian informed) navigate and inform each other and are germane here ... vis-a-vis Harbin as counterculture - and Google's alternativeness as well - as well as Harbin as Heart Consciousness Church (its first church) ... and conceivably of HCC as hippie ideology.  But while I'll riff a little about this here in these notes, my book is more focused ethnographically on Harbin emerging from the 1960s as culture, and on concepts of the virtual / actual vis-a-vis a planned and potentially virtual Harbin as ethnographic field site - and even for ethno-wiki-virtual-world-graphy - and particularly also for meditation (here partly as a releasing action focusing or relaxation response) in a virtual Harbin from one's home bath tub - and in digital goggles, for example.

- (Is my ethnographic manuscript Harbin advertising? Is all ethnography advertising in neoliberal regimes and in intercity - the information age?)

- So as I "journeyed" virtually down the Harbin Springs' road in Google Earth, I eventually tried to visit the Middletown Massage & Herb Collective, which words are written on the store front at 21159 Calistoga Rd, Middletown, California -
 (https://www.google.com/maps/place/Middletown+Massage+%26+Acupuncture+Collective/@38.752182,-122.615309,3a,75y,136.52h,90t/data=!3m4!1e1!3m2!1sCn9AV3cF91U0zC-9jWWx6Q!2e0!4m2!3m1!1s0x0:0xb0ef1233341d201!6m1!1e1) - the colorful building and also bookstore near the Highway 29 and Hwy 175 intersection in the center of Middletown which looks pretty hippy (I'll try to find a photo on my hard drive here) and interesting and inviting, and then tried to get off of the Hwy 29 digitally to look more closely at this shop, but Google Earth isn't yet that complete with photos to allow this, but in attempting to do so, I did see the grass around a tree in front of the shop (for dog pee-ing? - and was this significant in the photographer's or photographers' minds), and a woman of color sitting on its bench, and it made me wonder about who at Google might have taken these photos and how we end users end up seeing them - and what choices the Googlers made in doing so - and importantly who do they know at Harbin, and who were they talking to (and did they take them from a colorful Google Photo Car, or a discrete Google Photo Car? - this would have been a fun thing to do working for Google and getting paid for it) and also how I could get specific data about each photo in Google Earth for my ethnographic research ... I looked, tried to right click with my mouse and get information about this, but nothing came up ... so in terms of doing ethnographic STEM research, Google Earth is problematic at this point ... which makes for interesting ethnographic analysis and questions - given the probably sympathetic and appreciative attitude Google may also have toward Harbin Hot Springs - like I  do. Many anthropologist would acknowledge interpretation to be a key analytical approach - see Cerwonka and Malkki's book "Improvising Theory: Process and Temporality in Ethnographic Fieldwork" Univ of Chicago 2008 - and while "objectivity" in Media Studies and Visual Anthropology are generally not significant these days, I try to add accurate data, and write with accuracy in mind - with a nod to objectivity and neutrality and fair-mindedness - to the my ethnographic field notes, engaging the questions I'm asking - and given the vastness of data and questions inherent in thinking ethnographically about actual Harbin since the 1960s, and vis-a-vis the virtual Harbin.

- So, curiously, as I looked at the Middletown Massage & Herb Collective in Google Earth, I then saw what I think was my old 1997 Subaru Legacy, which I sold a few months ago. Now how did that get into these photos, and when were they taken, and who was part of this Google photographic network that lead to my car being photographed? ... G.L., if that's his real name, at Harbin who's been acting pretty weirdly to me, and seemingly hostile even, over the past few years? ...

- So I couldn't look very closely at the Middletown Massage & Herb Collective in Google Earth, for example, let alone go inside, and I also saw what was my old 1997 maroon Subaru Legacy station wagon, I think, which I slept in for years as I wrote my first Harbin book and in which I continued to take these Harbin field notes ...

- And then I proceeded a little farther on Hwy 29 to see the new Middletown Library which was built a few years ago ... and found the library was only partly constructed in this version of Google Earth - what year was that - around 2012? ... and in one Google Earth view (a series of composite photos) of the new library, at the corner of Hwy 29 and Callayomi street (across from the old library), there were two piles of dirt (https://www.google.com/maps/@38.749967,-122.616044,3a,75y,70.29h,90t/data=!3m4!1e1!3m2!1sJvMdD7Jm5Qx4emI1iMmnbQ!2e0!6m1!1e1) ... is the question of "who's got the dirt on Harbin" significant in the culture or discourse of Harbin and Middletown too ?

- And I'm really grateful that Google Earth posted this update and that it's coming along so beautifully ... and toward a great virtual Harbin - as ethnographic field site too ... and that I could visit the Harbin Springs' road and Middletown this way, in a way I've never done before, and wondrously ... with Google Earth taking into account questions of capitalism and realism and alternative thinking ... Google has a long history of digitally defining these issues and embracing and engaging protest, resistance, and alternative and countercultural thinking - in a California and the U.S. and post -1960s way - is all of my writing here just now in this section propaganda and ideology and advertising? ... "died in the wool" Marxists (I'm thinking of M.M. in Massachusetts here) would say so ... problematically but interestingly for me ...

- How did Google get this update specifically to me, and why this morning ?

- And in a related vein, perhaps Google Publisher will let me know when they're up and running again - soon they said about three weeks ago - and I can create a new WUaS Academic Press in it in potentially all 8,000 languages .... and I can also publish my "Naked Harbin: Harbin Hot Springs' Actual/Virtual Ethnography ~ Hippies, Warm Pools, Counterculture & Clothing-Optional, Virtual Harbin" book in it, have this book printed to paper in English and other languages, and marketed, distributed and sell it to libraries and in bookstores around the world for something like $29.95 per copy, anticipating writing a second book (and vis-a-vis CC WUaS), and also concurrently especially the further development of a Google made virtual Harbin for comparative field work, of which these very field notes are an expression.

Academic_Books_at_WUaS -
http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/Academic_Books_at_WUaS

Academic_Press_at_World_University_and_School -
http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/Academic_Press_at_World_University_and_School

- So my own needing to make a living (and thus selling my Harbin book even while developing CC WUaS), Harbin since the 1960s as countercultural place, and Google Earth as company and maker of virtual Harbin as ethnographic field site raise interesting ongoing questions for Harbin field work ... "more research is needed" to reiterate an academic cliche ...

(... more revisions and additions to these notes anon, but "one small step for mankind" i.e. making - first time I think I've been inspired to write Harbin field notes directly into my blog - and thanks to this Google Earth update).


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Here below is the new Google Product Forums that I just opened from Google Earth after "walking" down the Harbin Springs' road to the Middletown Library ... at, from the Google Earth app,  with this URL information "http://productforums.google.com/forum/ - Members' Open Area - Google Product Forums" ... (which takes me in a browser (Apple's Safari today), outside of Google Earth to a whole series of Google "Products" -Google has generated its own conceptions of products since 1996 - and right now the forum and icon I'd be interested in is "Google Maps and Earth Help Forum" on this page - https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!home . (As I listen to Pandora.com as I write this, an advertisement for O'Reilly's comes on, and owner Tim O'Reilly is also a old hippie, and internet visionary and a realist ... and, speculatively, he or someone he knows, could even know and be advising Ishvara (aka Bob Hartley - both went to and graduated from, I think, Harvard College, Tim graduating in 1975 and Ish in the late 50s ... ) and Harbin and Google in questions about Harbin's emergence in Google Earth vis-a-vis capitalism and openness and Harbin's hippie vision - which of course is my interpretation)...