SnitchCam

This article, linked from Slashdot, reminds me of David Brin's Earth. In that book, among other things, video cameras are everywhere and are in the hands of citizens. Most of the video vigilantes are elderly folk with nothing better to do. If I recall correctly, a pair of TruVu goggles retails for under $10. That book, plus my previous experiences and subsequent thinking, placed in my head the idea that a camera is more powerful and dangerous than a gun. That, I guess, is the modern meaning of the phrase "the pen is mightier than the sword".

Whatever you think about it, cameras are getting cheaper, smaller and more popular. It's easy to imagine that they'll be everywhere soon enough. This probably leaves you in one of two positions: screaming about privacy or adapting. Fight it or embrace it. The new thought today is this: I wonder if our great-grandchildren will have a lowered sense of privacy? Will the invading camera hordes desensitise them to the fear of being watched? Will their walls come down because everyone lives in glass houses? I don't know if there's a balance that way. It's possible there's some kind of equilibrium we could reach down that end of the scale, but from our point of view there is still some information that belongs only to me. Such a total breakdown of privacy would also mean a breakdown of identity and individuality.

I don't know where it ends. I don't know if it even starts, or if we swing back the other way eventually into a world full of big black curtains where pieces of me don't know what the other pieces are doing.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - In any case, the cameras are coming.
PPS - Only the most totalitarian governments will be able to regulate and control them.