Imagine a tiny camera, designed to be worn around the neck, that photographs your life as it happens, automatically clicking away, as often as once every 30 seconds.
If the idea wasn’t so creepy, it just might be compelling. But get used to it, because Microsoft is already involved, which means that the consumer life camera (scheduled for release in 2010) is realistically just around the corner.
According to the New Scientist,
the product was conceived as a way to create a source of memory for those who are memory impaired. The camera reacts by taking a photo every time there is a change in lighting or a change in temperature, either of which can be as subtlety influenced by an event as minor as a person approaching the camera wearer.
The advanced technology of the camera has been developed so that the camera essentially identifies significant events and photographs them in order to create a visual and chronological tool for “remembering” the occurrences of one’s day… or even one’s entire lifetime.
When Social Media is Involved through Blogs, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube
Now look beyond the medical application for this life camera as a tool and consider what could happen if people began documenting their lives on their cameras and sharing their life logs in much the same way as they now share their thoughts in blogs and on Twitter or images and video from their life on Facebook, YouTube or other social media platform.
Don’t even consider that people won’t do it if the technology becomes commercially available as planned; of course they will. Not so many years ago, if you had suggested that people would routinely document their thoughts and lives as publicly as they already do now via the internet, you would have been laughed at for your crazy suggestion.
Clearly, the consumer use of life documenting cameras is only a matter of time. And while they may be inevitable, what are your thoughts on the matter? How would you feel about wearing one? Can you see millions of people caught up in the idea of watching a live stream of images say from Ashton Kutcher’s life?
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