It’s been reported in a number of posts, news articles, and even on local television shows that two mysterious giant boxes have appeared in the San Francisco harbor next to Treasure Island and another one just like it is being constructed in the Portland Main harbor. The boxes are roughly four stories tall, 250 feet long, and 70 feet wide. They are made from cargo containers stacked on barges and, according to the reports, everyone is pretty sure the structures belong to Google.
Now the logical question everyone is asking is ‘what are the things for?’ Apparently even the Mayor of San Francisco, Edwin M. Lee, doesn’t know. When news reporters for the local CBS affiliate station KPIX asked Mayor Lee if Google had told him anything he replied “No, they’ve kept [it] a secret from me as well and I was trying to see what the Treasure Island people are saying and they say ‘no’, they haven’t told them [anything] as well,” the mayor said. “So they have done a lot of high level secrecy that even the mayor of San Francisco doesn’t know what’s going on. I’ll have to wait to see what happens.”
Of course the Mayor made these comments with a smile so we can probably assume that they aren’t building nuclear reactors in those boxes.
There are two current theories about the purpose of those floating container constructions A. They are portable data storage repositories or B. They are moveable Google Glass stores that once completed would be towed from city to city in an effort to promote and sell their geeky (and prohibitively expensive) wearable eyeglass computers.
Now I suppose they could be testing out new affordable housing structures (Google Homes) or they’re gearing up for a really late run at the America’s Cup (Google Boats) or they are going to be storing thousands of teddy bears to give to needy kids this Christmas (Google Bears).
Or maybe these things are going to start popping up in harbors all over the world and when someone finally flips that big switch beams of light are going to arc around the globe and link them all together creating a vast electronic network of interconnected barge boxes. And that network will allow people to magically communicate with each other using nothing more than a computer or smart phone (with a few adds thrown in for good measure).
Personally I hope they’re building Transformer-like robots that will burst forth and wreck havoc on the defenseless citizens of San Francisco and Portland (we all know what a prime target Portland Main is – all those lobsters and all, aye-yup).
