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HP Experiments with 'Always On' Camera
An anonymous reader writes "Hewlett-Packard researchers in the U.K. are working on a camera that's always on, recording everything you see and letting you go back later and decide what's actually photo-worthy. Raises some serious privacy questions. But as an HP researcher notes, "If your wearable camera is always on ... you're not going to miss any moments, but you're also going to get a load of junk.""
"...but you're also going to get a load of junk"
If by "a load of junk" you mean "a lot of pictures of people pointing at your goofy-looking glasses and laughing," then you're absolutely right.
"you're not going to miss any moments, but you're also going to get a load of junk."
wow I guess they're right... most of my life is a load of junk.
But what if you gave this camera to those guys on the MountainDew or Surge commercials who only do exciting things constantly?
HP Revolutionizes the boring webcam technology by fusing it with reality TV. Story at 11.
Ride the snake
Looks like the dawn of times when one would have to decide what NOT to capture.
*sigh... life's tough
http://efil.blogspot.com/
Hmm...intesting idea... need some big batteries..
Awesome idea, but I don't think I would want to see everything I see again. Not to mention what would storage be like for the thing?
Gargoyle?
DO NOT WRITE IN THIS SPACE
okSounds alot like the Microsoft Wearable camera. anyways i think its a cool idea. Sometimes i dont feel like taking pictures manually and maybe it will get more 'real life' photos instead of having everyone poised for them.
Sadly, all I would get are many many screenshots of slashdot.
I Love Alberta Beef
Now I'll have to sift through 1000s of google responses when I search for anything containing nothing more than someone unimportant opinion, with 10,000 pictures of their boring life scattered throughout. Oh wait, blogging already does this, it's just going to get worse with the pictures to document things no one really cares about.
On the serious side, this is, in my opinion, the resolution of a problem that doesn't exist. It's very cool, it just isn't a very needed product.
Jamon
I can count to 1023 on my hands. Ask me about #132.
Great. My GF is already pissed that I don't delete enough of the stupid pictures I take. I tell her "I keep everything, just in case." She would murder me in my sleep if I got one of these.
TW
I like to call them "eyes".
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
It's called a CamCorder.
Somewhere, sometime, somebody will catch something on par with the Zapruder film, or the Rodney King tape, and it will spark a cultural revolution, and then Microsoft will make you pay a DRM fee to decode your OWN LIFE!
It's called a cam corder
Sure, it may create some privacy issues...if it's storing it at some central HP or public database. If it's just recording it to some internal storage drive, and then you move the footage to your hard drive or somewhere else, then what's the problem?? I'm not trying to troll, but why is this such a big deal?
Is it just me, or is the paranoia level going up these days...
And yes, you can pry my mechanical Yashica and my black and white films from my cold, dead fingers...
This comment does not exist.
And you'll end up with a boat load of crappy pictures. Not framed right, blurry and so on. Or will this thing come with a cyborg eye attachment for focus, framing, zoom, etc...?
Seriously, the only people geeky enough to want this are just going to be watching slashdot all day anyway.
Jamon
I can count to 1023 on my hands. Ask me about #132.
First we had to have automatic sinks because we were too lazy to turn them on, then we had warning labels on toys with a circumference of four inches, then we had an idiot who sued McDonalds because it made her fat... Now we're so lazy we have to have a camera we don't press a button on? That's sad... Just plain sad...
Hmm... sure is going to be a lot of storage on that camera. Now if you make that camera Wi-Fi enabled, you got yourself a home-brew Reality Television series you can stream on your website 24/7. Eat your heart out Girls Gone Wild.
Why do you always wear those damn glasses when we make love ???
...for those blinking-twelvers who have no idea whether their own camera is even turned on.
Fuck Slashdot
just have the camera always on, but discarding anything over a minute or two. Then when something happens you want to keep press the button and the last two minutes are saved, plus what happens as you watch.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Make it stereoscopic (3-D) and then perhaps I will be interested. Probably could be done by strapping two of the little cameras on.
Not to sound like a dick or anything, but I think they should maybe be working on helping blind people see rather than helping sighted people see even more.
This is by far, the lamest, most annoying, and totally stupid april fools story that's been posted yet. I mean, glowing hamsters, cold fission, W bush on viagra, those are all things easy to believe, but a camera that you wear?? Now come on!!
Easy guys, I put my pants on one leg at a time. The difference is after I put on my pants I make gold records!
To remove 'bad' pictures, you're going to end up with gigs of data. In a single day you might have at least a few hundred pictures to sort through. Thats a lot of time.
(1) If the camera take less pictures and intensively cuts away blurry or dark pictures, you're probably going to end up missing the occasional things you want a picture of.
(2) If the camera takes pictures of everything, every few seconds, you'll have to spend hours going through rubbish pictures to find stuff you actually want to keep.
It sounds a bit far fetched to me at the moment, but who knows?
Boy, there would be some shocked fathers out there if they witnessed in close, excruciating detail what their daughters did to/for me in high school.
I think continuous recording of my life combined with judicious use of the star wipe will make for quite an epic.
Mmm, Transmetropolitan moment here...
I always wanted one of these, there's so many fleetingly beautiful moments in life.
:D > £/$
sex
Wasn't this a feature of a Neal Stephenson book?
Seriously though, this is a classic case of a problem in search of a solution. I wouldn't be too hard on researchers who go down strange alleys like this, you never know where it could lead. I'd say the military would find good use for it.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
I like to call them "eyes".
"Ah, Chew.....If only you could see the things I have seen with your eyes."
Oh wait. It is a movie that's coming out with Robin Williams as a tech the edits the images collected by a device, implanted at birth into a high-light reel for your funeral. And I bet the producers thought that was decades off.
This signiture copied from somewhere.
I wonder, at times it seems technology gets a pass, just because it is complicated.
Though the article mentions privacy concerns, it is stuff away between a half-dozen other headings. All technology is nothing more than tools. It is the context that gives the tool its meaning. And in this case, the social context of the tool should very much be weighed against the abilitity to "never miss an important moment." Who defines important? And who defines what *should* be recorded, and what should not be recorded? The social implications of all technology deserve more consideration than they currently recieve, I think.
My tinfoil lens cap will put a stop to that.
It's probably best for the person wearing the device not to watch the footage they're recording, as the act of recording would introduce new footage, which they would inevitably have to watch at some point... ...at the end, you'd have a person watching themselves watching themselves watching themselves ad infinitum.
Interestingly, in the same article, he predicted the CD Rom, the Internet, Wikipedia, Color Photography -- well before the first dry cameras or the first computers.
imagine everyone walks around with a little camera/mic clipped to their shirt as common as having a phone in your pocket, disputes would always be on video, ufos would never be missed and blackmail would be plentiful, its gonna get partially like that like it or not, camera phones keep getting more popular and their memory is getting larger and larger, even if you dont have them always on in a couple of years almost everyone will have a camera within reach 24/7. Privacy issues are gonna go mental super-hardcore!
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
That should say 'solution in search of a problem.'
Drill baby drill - on Mars
Heh, no need to worry about Big Brother with. You'll be worrying about Big Daddy. So who's you Big Daddy? :)
Now I won't have to figure out how to control my shoe-cam when walking behind skirted babes. However, a Kilt Avoidance System would be nice.
Table-ized A.I.
...lots of pictures will actually be pictures of pictures.
Imagine what you could do with that kind of snooping power.
Wh47 d1d j00 541, 31337 15n't t3h r0xor5 ne m0r3???
And certainly you can power it with our own human blood!
I'm sorry if this sounds incredibly naive, I'm not an engineer. But how is that even possible? Always on? Constantly recording everything? Wouldn't you need an insane amount of battery power for that? My digital camera, which, granted is a couple of years old, runs out of juice in about an hour. And then, recording everything? Wouldn't you need an equally massive storage medium? How much would a camera like this cost?!
It'd be nice if that camera had a "shutter button", much like your typical film camera or digicam, which instead of signaling the device to take a picture, actually marked that particular time as interesting. Later on you could go back to those shots and pick frames at or near those points. Another feature: Add audio capture so you can whisper to the camera when you take those shots, so you can make notes about the shot.
Where's the privacy problem? Let only people you trust see things they're allowed to remember. That's why the difference between "public" and "private" places is so important, and why the right to control access to our private places is essential to privacy, and to our participation in society - rather than alienating us from it.
--
make install -not war
LONG time ago (mid to late 80s). So NO FREAKIN PATENTS!
:)
http://www.wearcam.org/
Steve Mann is a nerd God.
... or is this the perfect example of a solution looking for a problem? Most people taking pictures fall into the following three categories:
1. Taking pictures of live action, in which case they should be using a video medium (read: DV)
2. Taking pictures of things that don't move too much (read: Geographic or structural objects, or people that are actively participating in being photographed, posing, etc.)
3. Porn (which I imagine requires much more equipment, lighting, people, etc.)
In these three categories, we already have working solutions. This product doesn't offer massive advancement over what we already have, from what I can tell.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
We must be coming to the point where a "wearable" computer can store Gigs of info, and have a decent enough battery or a low-power camera to record everything. Yes, privacy concerns are understandable here, but I suppose like everything, it does have its uses.
:) Always thought it would be cool to be my own movie (or at least music video) -- being stuck in traffic would fire up "Everybody Hurts" by REM or something "relevant".
I got myself a small digital camera at one point with the optimism of being able to capture interesting pictures by having my camera with me at all times. Unfortunately, it hasn't happened. With an "always on" thing, pics are easy. (yeah yeah, I figure people would mind having pictures taken of them)
If they partner with the iPod or something, they can even come up with your day's soundtrack based on where you are, what you're looking at, and maybe biofeedback sensors.
This connection makes it wonderfully poetic to see this invention coming from HP.
This is not a new idea. This DejaView Camera keeps a buffer of 30 seconds.
Deja View's Camwear Model 100 captures everything you see, records it in a buffer so you never miss that moment! Simply press the record button and the last 30 seconds of video with audio will write to a removable storage device.
The Deja View Camwear Model 100 easily clips to your glasses or hat is constantly buffering 30 seconds of what you experience while wearing our product. With one simple press of a button, the camera will record a 30 second video with audio in 320X240 CIF in the latest MPEG-4 technology! The file is saved to a SD Memory card (64MB provided) upgradeable to 512MB (optional). The file is easily stored and transferred to a computer or when played in Video out mode, can be recorded directly through a VCR or viewed right on your TV screen! USB connection for computer or remove SD memory card and view it in an SD reader (not included).
It might be interesting. If the "always on" camera recorded all the time allowing you to "go back in time", say 30 minutes, to save something interesting that happens. Kind of giving you a camera buffer.
Otherwise, the camera keeps recording over the past recorded data.
I always hate when something odd/funny happens and I don't think to take a picture right away. But somehow I think that this "always on" camera is going to be taking a lot of horrible shots.
-S
We Apprentice Developers and Designers
This will be all fun and games until the first subpoena.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
Have it record (and remember) the past, say, 60 seconds of happenings automatically. This will cut down on the 'junk' significantly, but allow for enough time to capture that unexpected moment and save it.
Have two additional modes: Full time record (For constant recording beyone 1 minute) and snapshot (still images). that way you'll always have your camera readt to take a picture or video at a moment's notice, and won't have to go back and find what you really want to keep.
=Smidge=
"Raises some serious privacy questions."
My God, does this sort of thing really have to be stuffed in everywhere? Technology has nothing to do with privacy - it is it's use.
A comment like this has no more place here than saying "oh yeah, eyes? and memory? serious privacy concerns there".
Free iPods - now in the UK!
I think this concept of always on is so full of crap .. The people you talk to will never be normal again cause they know that if they say something to you it is on camera and can be used against you .. I know that you can potentially capture great moments but is that worth losing sleep over .. Everything can be hacked and the radio signals that the HP article mentions can be too and in that case there you go drones walking around with always on cameras it will be like you are in front of a lot of security cameras and all the time.
Time HP gave some serious thought to the privacy secton they wrote.
This is basically a miniaturized camcorder. Except it doesn't have an off button.
Posting as AC since I'm not at home.
I wrote on my homepage (aeinnovations.com) a bit about this.
The core idea is that it's important to keep in mind that the camera can only record what the user's actually looking at.
I worry about these all around less than I worry about the existing ubiquitous "security" cameras - some of which are hidden, and all of which are being monitored by who-knows-who.
http://www.aeinnovations.com/panopticon.php is the page in case anyone is interested.
God, this is awesome. I would love to use it while playing golf for when I hit those chips that just roll in. Also could provide for some great TV clips. Im sure privacy would get brought into this debate as well and it could help crime situations.
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artlu.net
If I'm not mistaken, most digital cameras have a series of sensors arranged in a trinary pattern of reds, greens and blues. Each "dot", can only sense sensitivity towards that color of light.
When a digital camera takes a picture, it takes those reds, greens, and blues, and then interpolates the values from the surrounding pixels. In a sense, the "red" dot borrows from the surrounding green and blue dot intensities in order to calculate the final 24-bit value.
That's why cameras take roughly 1-2 seconds to process the picture. Correct me if I'm wrong.
There was some sort of technology I was reading about a while back that allowed a sensor to capture red, green, and blue values entirely, eliminating that complex calculation. I'm wondering if HP employs this technology. Anyone know?
/^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i
i think i've heard of this before.... i think it was called a "video camera," but i could be mistaken.
Their idea is to have the camera respect electronic boundaries and stop recording if within range of a specific radio signal?
Their idea of warning those being recorded is to put a red light on it?
Seriously - it would take all of two seconds to break the antenna and smash the light... now give it to a hacker and you'll get a more elegant solution almost as quickly.
Seeing the great success of his other preditions (calculators, internet, etc) I think this _is_ the future of digital photography.
What did I do last night? With a camera like this, I'd know.
Actually, I think this shows up in David Brin's "Earth". He called them "Tru-Vue Goggles", or something similar.
Two tangential comments:
Perhaps the glasses could monitor the
wearer's brain activity and only store a
frame when it detects a strong reaction to
what's being viewed.
There was a public outcry when photography
was invented, when Goerge Eastman marketed
it to the public, when X-rays were discovered,
etc. The uproar over these is nothing new.
but if it's always on, when are you going to have the time to go back and decied what to keep. When editing audio and or video the rule of thumb is 1 hour for every minute of completed footage. so if you are recording 24/7 where do teh extra hours come to edit the raw footage?
I'm homeless but I enjoy kinky sex, you insensitive clod!
Well, not exactly, but a typical professional will take a whole reel of the same shot, and then discard 90% of them. Even as an ameteur, I just take photos of anything I think may be worthwhile, and will probably throw most of them away. Digital makes this a lot cheaper and easier. An always on camera will make things even easier than that
Just the thing for recording the scene right before the cr
Ask me about my vow of silence!
You are probably on camera more than you know it, at least this one is out in the open. People are also already pitching fits over cell phones that have this limited capacity, for instance like the clip videos that showed a whore lying about rape cuz she wanted money getting a sports team out of a false rape charge. (hang in there Kobe, this lying bitch will be tossed out with the rest of the trash)
So who cares if you are caught on camera? Gonna bitch cuz you're in somebody's memory next?
http://www.krages.com/phoright.htm
...although having a camera snapping away constantly isn't exactly "Photography" IMO.
Basically, if you're in a public area you can't stop someone from photographing you (though you could ask not to be) nor can anyone stop you from taking pictures in public areas. This includes buildings and "people/street watching"
$cat
Has Obsessive Compulsive Disorder turned into a fad of some kind?
Documenting daily mundane activities and random thoughts, then publishing it on the web seemed weird enough. Now people are going to PHOTOGRAPH every moment of their lives?
Are we as a society so in need of validation that we've turned to mindless, uselesss self-promotion as a distraction from meaningful, productive activities?
*
*
What about a different model. One that doesn't keep the record of all you see, but just, say, last 30 minutes. So, you saw something intersting, it's gone, but you tell it "make snapshot of last 5 mins" and it records last 5 minutes on permanent record. Say, a lot was going on, but you catch a breath and record last half a hour. And if you know a lot WILL be going on, just tell it to start recording right away.
I guess this not only will save a lot on media costs, it won't raise so many security concerns (all data records are opt-in, not opt-out, only unlike with normal camera - with ability to record what happened already, not only what is going to happen.
Think 1000 lines long shell scrollback.
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
Badge Cameras are a project by H. Keith Henson of space colony and anti-Scientology fame, to put cameras into police badges, hopefully preventing future Rodney King incidents. The HP scheme sounds similar.
in public, one should assume they're being filmed.
If you record more than half of your life, well, there just isn't going to be time to sift through it all before it's over...
You shall see a cow on the roof of a cotton house.
It can get small enough that it may be a pair of glasses, incorporated into a hat, a diadem, a broach, medallion etc.. If it were set up to automatically upload all images to a service all the time. What happens if you get mugged? By the time your mugger gets to the camera his picture has been stored on your service's server. If something newworthy happens near you, and you catch it, I am sure the news channels would bid for your images. However if you commit a felony and the police supoena your images you land yourself in jail. Privacy problems abound around public facilities as no one wants to have their pictures snapped and put on the net. You may also be slapped in jail for child porn if you are wearing it and changing your kids diapers at the same time.
That weird looking guy with glases and a baseball hat that u occasionally see on certian AHEM sites is there BETA Tester...sighn me up :P
Because I see no reason that this technology can't become really cheap, I expect there will soon be people recording not only what they see, but what they don't see. Why not have one facing forward and a second facing backward? And each side?
Enjoy your privacy now, because soon anything you do outside will be recorded by someone or something.
I wonder if this will advance facial and object recognition? Would be kind of cool to be able choose a picture of a person and see every other image they're in. Even better, thrown in object/character recognition, search for "When was I on State Street" (based on viewing street sign), or "show pictures of my car".
I predict that if this becomes popular, peer to peer networks will pop up which will allow me to register my friends so they can see any pictures that include them. Very neat!
I also predict there's gonna be a shortage of tinfoil hats and face masks in the near future....
This would work if you had a trigger to mark "on the spot" ranges that are interesting. That way when you get home you won't have to search weeks of non-events to find a cool shot.. Sort a "that was funny" button, or perhaps more appropriately for
How much control do you get? Aperture? Exposure?
The problem with most digital cameras are they're just point of shoot...it's a bastard child of the art.
Man, the voyeur sites are gonna love this one.
An episode of PBS's Scientific American Frontiers back in April of last year featured an MIT Media Lab student named Brian Clarkson who built this exact same thing himself. He wore it like a backpack with fisheye lens cameras on the front and back. One of the more interesting things he was able to capture and re-watch was the first time he met his then current girlfriend.
You can watch the episode online.
(The part featuring Clarkson is titled "Never Forget a Face")
I can see this device being extremely useful in certain situations:
If a police officer had a device like this when conducting an arrest or a stop the device would be beneficial for everyone involved:
1) If Officer does anything illegal the defendant has proof
2) If the defendant says something or does anything, the police now have proof.
In this context the only person with cause to worry is the individual doing something illegal (either police officer of member of public).
Camera idea sounds good (thought of it 25 years ago), but a future brain interface sounds even better...(why not get the real data "images", but playing them back would be a little wierd (open more than one window?..probably will need a bigger and more complex visual cortex? Of course, why stop there, immersive multi person games through ultra high speed network interfaces (sounds like a borg experience), but would be great for quickly learing a subject by accessing brain libraries..
I already wear big glasses you insensetive clod!
Problem is that these 'real life' photos generally suck. They have no 'staying power'. You don't need to line everybody up and shoot them but come on, take 10 seconds and compose something with at least a nod to aesthetic and technical considerations. I was going that way ('real life snapshots') with most of the shots of the huge protests around DC two and three years ago, and they're less interesting every time I look at them. Do you really need pictures of every mundane moment of your life? I sure as hell don't. Daily life is boring. Why waste perfectly good silicon and precious bits recording it? I won't care what I ate for lunch today in ten years. It wasn't very good! (Chicken fingers and some anonymous Asian-styled beef and peppers thing from the Food By The Pound place downstairs, in case you were wondering. You probably weren't. See my point?)
"Sometimes i dont feel like taking pictures manually" was the kicker. Let me know how THAT outlook works out for you.
This whole thing reminds me of an article I read somewhere about how the proliferation of digital photography in journalism and amongst the great unwashed is actually causing more 'moments' to be *lost* rather than preserved. Digital images are so easy to delete, whole swaths of time can be lost without a second thought. One thing that was cited was the "Lewinsky Hug" photos with Clinton. According to the author, the whole thing may never have gone down if it had just happened today because the pictures were worthless in any other sense and would have been deleted. Since they were physical, they stuck around a while, and next thing you know we had a scandal!
Digital photography is overrated. This is just useless.
"These people look deep within my soul and assign me a number based on the order in which I joined" --Homer re:
Always on Camera you can wear, acompanied by a rack of lead acid batteries you can cart around behind you, based on past experience of HP camera battery life.
but seriously, this just doesn't sound like a marketable idea to me, whenever i miss a shot it's because i don't have a camera with me, not because it's not sat at my eye level monitoring my every move.
Software Freedom Day!.
besides, a camera that's on all the time would give uterly useless crappy shots! photgraphy is about composition, light, technique...
How about hooking up some sort of biometric meter to the camera, which records your pulse rate, or some other gauge of how interested you are in what you're seeing (brain waves? adrenaline?). Then when you're sifting through footage you can look at a graph of your biometric information and automatically cull the 99% of your life where you are staring slackjawed at asinine, unrealistic slashdot posts...
You drank my drink, you drunk!
If that camera is always on, it's gonna be catching a lot of junks when I got into a locker room.
Cyde Weys Musings - Scrutinizing the inscrutable
at least that would no be captured!
like when you do the same with your webcam..
-
i have found, you can find,happiness in slavery!
Can we get Paris Hilton to wear one :-)
microsoft invented this years ago.
i myself am not going to use this technology until i can be hardwired to it though.
That's funny. I thought it came from Dr. Steve Mann, who has been using wearable computers since the 70s. He's done a ton of "lookpaintings" which involve him looking around and his wearable computer correcting the images to the same perspective.
Check it out here.
"Raises some serious privacy questions."
Seems like every invention these days does that. Sounds like someone are turning into little old ladies.
Meanwhile, a new generation are growing up, accepting things the way they are as their reference point.
Then someone will tell me how that is alarming and fail to realize that it is just progress, which brings me back to the beginning.
When you find progress frightning, you must(like me) be getting old.
Hurray for me...i officially added nothing to this discussion
--I swear, it was a case of isolated idiopathic hemibalissmus
You're the one who's a sad luddite. This is an advance in technology, just like the automatic sinks. As such, they're both useful all over the world.
The toy thing and the MacDonald thing are by-products of the American culture (there's an oxymoron for you!), they don't affect the majority of the world, and they're not related to technology.
Anyway, parent comment is a troll.
HP Wearable Digital Camera: Free
16MB Memory Modules: $1000
Irony: Priceless
Imagine all the things that you're missing in your day to day life, things you see but don't realize that you saw them. Like when people take videos or pictures of something only to find that something else that's interesting is going on at the same time. Browsing through all the "junk" footage might reveal things you didn't notice when it really happened.
I can imagine this being used as evidence in a trial. Posters reading "Where you in this area on such and such day and such and such time?? We're doing an investigation and would like to see any footage you have from that time."
If it were set up to automatically upload all images to a service all the time...If something newworthy happens near you, and you catch it, I am sure the news channels would bid for your images
A similar premise was used in David Brin's Earth , where people would wear their Tru-view glasses to record suspicious activity. A bit like the "curtain twitchers", only they could be anywhere.
"She's furniture with a pulse"
have hit the nail on the head.
TiVo doesn't just record everything; it keeps a sliding buffer. Same should apply here. In fact, just after I got mine, I thought how useful it would be for something like this to be mounted in one's car (kinda like those the cops have in many "wildest police videos gone wild" clips) -- you could automatically get the plate number of some jerk who hits and runs; you could prove you were not at fault in an accident; and so on.
As for wearing an odd pair of glasses to get the effect, I dunno. But ideally, you'd want to get footage all around you, not just what you're looking at (seems like half the usefulness of such a system would indeed be the ability to go back and catch something you missed the first time -- again, like TiVo).
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
At least if they go to pull the camera out she has a chance to say "No thank you - I prefer not to have my picture taken".
To which I can say "Sure, whatever *click* *click* *click*." If your wife is that offended by having her picture taken she shouldn't go out in public, because there isn't, and shouldn't be, a damned thing she can do about somebody taking her picture. Well, I guess with the obvious restriction of harrasment/stalking, but we aren't talking somebody following her around all day taking her picture. We're talking lots of people ending up with her in the background or walking by, as they record (for some odd reason) their journey to work that day.
There just isn't a privacy concern here which doesn't already exist with today's camera technology. And it is already illegal to break into somebody's private abode to take pictures of everything... so what's the problem?
- I love animals. I try to eat at least one a day.
Anything that increases the amount of clumsy yet realistic amateur fighting and fscking on the internet is ok by me. Less hollywood, more neighborhood. THAT is entertainment.
Considering that the next paragraph of Bush's article reads:
The cord which trips its shutter may reach down a man's sleeve within easy reach of his fingers. A quick squeeze, and the picture is taken. On a pair of ordinary glasses is a square of fine lines near the top of one lens, where it is out of the way of ordinary vision. When an object appears in that square, it is lined up for its picture. As the scientist of the future moves about the laboratory or the field, every time he looks at something worthy of the record, he trips the shutter and in it goes, without even an audible click. Is this all fantastic? The only fantastic thing about it is the idea of making as many pictures as would result from its use.
it's clear that he didn't predict this! (Actually it was already apparent from the paragraph originally quoted, which after all refers to "a hundred exposures"...)
Sorry, I just have little patience with exaggerated claims about such predictions...
I'm wouldn't be too worried about the privacy problem, really- I'm one of those guys who carries his camera with him all the time and trust me, if I don't want you to know I'm taking your picture you won't.
:)] or just toss it in locked archives if I can't get ahold of them. Almost none of my photos get posted to the public Web anyway.
You have to take some responsibility for your own privacy - if you don't want someone to take a picture of you making out then take it to a bedroom (and lock the door.)
Privacy in regards to photography is kind of like computer security: if someone really wants to violate your privacy they'll manage to somehow. Obviously the product described makes that easier, but it doesn't change the fundamental nature of the game; you have to limit your exposure to damage. Basically, only do things you would be embarrassed about having the world shown with people you trust not to do said showing.
As long as you're not a celebrity and you're not doing anything exciting, the chances that someone is going to bother to post your photo on the web are very low. If it does get posted for whatever reason, the chances of someone recognizing you are likely even lower. And if a damaging photo does get taken/posted? Well, that's what lawyers and boyfriends are for.
My personal policy has always been to show the photo to subject and delete it if requested - but I've only had someone ask twice in well over 10K photos. If I find something really racy at home I'll contact whoever's in it again to see what they want done with it [most people just want copies
On the other hand, something like this would be a godsend for me and my close friends, there have been so many times something interesting has happened and I couldn't get it framed up in time it makes me want to scream. A friend of mine once drove his motorcycle into his pool, for instance- camera was in the house. Would have made an awesome photo or vid to show the kids when I'm old and grey.
I remember attending a panel discussion at a Leica School of Photography seminar in 1973, photographer Robert Heinecken declared that in the future there would be always-on cameras, sort of like eyeglasses, with a massive memory storage (he suggested holographic memory because that was the cutting edge of research at the time). You'd be able to pick out any moment of time and pull up a stored photo of what you were seeing at that moment. The other panelists disagreed vehemently and said it was impossible, it would never happen.
I like to call them "eyes".
Yeah, but yours are the outdated Mark One Eyeballs and can't compare to the newer model.
Which reminds me of a joke seen on snopes' mailing list recently:
Alex had an artificial eye which he always leaves in a glass of water overnight. One morning he accidentally swallowed it which resulted in stomach pains. He went to the doctor about it, but before he could explain the doctor had him on the examination table without his clothes and was peering into his backside with some sort of an instrument that had a bulb on it.
That's the setup without the original punchline, to which another contributor added:
The one I'm familiar with has the doctor telling the patient repeatedly, don't worry, and practically fighting with him to get his clothes off and get him on the table. The doctor then begins the examination, still hushing the patient's protests. He raises the sheet, adjusts his light, and sees -- the eye looking back at him.
He lowers the sheet, puts down his instruments, walks to the head of the examining table, and says to the patient, "look, you just gotta trust me."
Got Glurge?
Look it up.
"Raises some serious privacy questions"
wah wah wah wah wah.
no it doesn't.
shut up.
Actually, computers were being created as he was writing his essay, and color photography had already been around for a decade. Also, Edwin Land patented instant photography in 1946 (first Polaroid camera sold in 1948), though you might not consider it "dry" until the SX-70 came out in 1972.
It is interesting how he predicted certain parts of innovations but not others. For example, he was quite aware of using radio for telecommunications and CRTs for recording and displaying information, but his memex device was supposed to have a whole library on microfilm to be projected onto screens.
aQazaQa
It's bad enough you have to smile and act nice half the time, I don't need any further pressure to perform. Bah, I'll glower at and then indignatedly boycott anyone who uses this in my presence. Then again, I kinda doubt lots of people have the time or energy to look at everything they see twice. After all, once is often depressing enough already, and what if you'll catch lots of tiny li'l details that'll trash all your fluffy delusions? Alright, so it's just another disgustingly happy little toy for the perpetual party advertisers claim we live in. I wonder why I'm so pissed off.
"Oh, and here's the first time I got beat up at school for having a dorky camera strapped to my head!"
this story has been posted before....
IIRC in the novel "Tru-View(tm) Blasses" were a favorite among elderly (who seem to be fond of wearing really big glasses anyway) to report nuisance and vandalism crimes by those damned teenagers.
But more likely, local news shows will have a "Rodney King Minute of the Day".
Either way, soon to be the bane of police departments everywhere.
What type of storage are we looking at for continuous recording of 3+ megapixel photos? Most cameras today are filled after a few high quality photos (unless you go out a buy a gig of flash memory) so I would assume some major advancements in storage (or wireless transmission to a satellite, then on to a remote storage facility for a fee?). We're talking ALIENS technology?
This sounds alot like what Prof. Steve Mann and EyeTap have been experimenting with for a long time. They were featured on the TechTV show "Nerd Nation" not too long ago. Real interesting stuff.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
wow, he predicted color photography in 1945?
in this age of communication i'm just not getting through
Time to mention our local cyborg Steve Mann again. His system is constantly recording, with a buffer that runs several minutes back. If he decides he has just seen something worth keeping, he can signal it to save the last several minutes and/or start recording immediately into a buffer that won't get deleted. (There's no need to sit down every night and sift through your entire day on fast-forward. That would just be silly - you'd have to spend every other day watching your life flash before your eyes!)
Our intelligent designer has never created an animal that we couldn't improve by strapping a bomb to it.
...oh those should be fun with this on... Just try not to look down that much.
I can imagine this would be quite handy in catching "Our finest" in a lie.
For example, pulling you over, and telling you right to your face that you were pulled over because of not coming to a complete stop at stop light / signs. Then going on to say that he smelled stronging weed from in your car.
I speak from experience unfortunatly.
(Excuse my spelling please.)
Well, he described his microfilm as being either...
(Considering they had no LED lasers, this is as close a description to a CD Rom I can think of -- a beam to write and a photocell to read.) ... or ...
which describes the hard drive well.dry color photography, and digital photography
If Mobog is anything to go on, then this camera is just going to spew out 50% wang-shots, and 50% shots of girls' arses.
Can't Wait.
gadgetophile.com
Being the giant Hp fan I am I have been following this story for some time by load of junk they mean that you will be able to attach existing 35 mil lenses to the camera, photo editing software & more...
But he's definately (sic) the most visionary scientist I've ever heard of. Without even knowing about a transistor, he identified most of the important electronic technologies that we use today.
Do you think this kind of foresight would be possible today? In his time there probably weren't technology scammers to the extent that we have now (eg., cheap Cold Fusion, 100 MPG carbs, penis enlargement pills, stable Windows OS', etc.).
One thing the internet has given us is the unlimited reach of the scammer.
Mass media has given us ad ratings-related hysteria about non-issues in the masses. I don't think this will change for a few generations.
Back. Camel. SPAM. Break.
And if it does, will it get what you see or just a bunch of static?
Will Jody Foster wear it?
Have you figured out which movie I'm talking about yet?
I had thought of this years ago, I think for official business sound recording is more valuable than pictures. I do want to record all the promises that were made to me during hiring process, all the stuff that my manager asked me to do and all the requirements that the client mentioned in a jiffy. This would make my life much easier.
Though in personal life, camera is more valuable as I do want to remember the moments and do not particularly care about what was said.
Everyone is complaining about how this thing looks and works today, but think about the future. In a few years we will have a much smaller device, maybe even implanted, without power issues, and this thing will be able to record your whole life. It could also record other interesting data in parallel, like your heart rate at each frame, brain waves, etc. Then is easier to get to the interesting parts and skip the junk (based on heart rate etc.)
Put it in your newborn and in 18 years you will save a lot of money when you send him to a psychiatrist. What a great tool later in life for self introspection.
This could be useful for accident investigators. Some people may be carrying/wearing these things near the scene of an accident or crime and could be used to figure out what happened. They may have trouble in court unless you could prove that there was no tampering.
:(
Unfortunatelly I haven't read the article because it won't load
big brother is watching you. remember, if you see anyone who even remotly looks like they could dare oppose the party, immediatly report them to your district thought police manager.
a video camera?
the only thing limiting to what you can capture is the tape and battery.
you use a camera for capturing a still moment. you use a video camera for capturing an entire event.
Live your life each day as if it was your last.
What's the difference between this and a video camera?... you roll back the tape and then decide which frames to keep as screen grabs?
To see that, I'd pay... um, never mind.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
Darth Vader is going to use this camera to record footage of him having a 5CRE4M1NG 0RG45M with Queen Amidala.
Listen to Vader
Not only did Vannevar Bush predict this in the 40s, but Steve Mann was actually *doing* it in at MIT over a decade ago. http://www.wearcam.org/steve5.jpg
DEC supplied a bunch of the equipment for that research (before it was bought by Compaq, which was bought by HP), so I'm sure HP knows that this is a tired old idea by now.
My bitstream will be encrypted and the key won't be in escrow.
Furthermore the authorities will not be able to compel testimony from the devices that I own; nor from the devices that represent me.
Awww who am I kidding there's no money in that.
Yes, but can he beat Nostradamus? No, I didn't think so.
If you apply the current rules governing public use of cameras then this is no different.
This needs no new legislation.
This needs no new electronic control beams/ radio waves built in.
What will need changing is the amount of enforcement needed. In terms of percentage of growth it will probably be analogous to the increase in recorded time that occurs. Thus in primarily still photography days you were talking snap shots. So even someone shooting film as fast as possible still only caught a small fraction of time. Now, as with the introductino of home video cameras, you would see an increase in the amount of time recorded. If you think of invasion of privacy useage as a percentage of the time recorded by everyone with a video camera.. then that will go up accordingly as time that is recorded goes up.
Question is will the ease of recording make for more invasion of privacy ? Or will such work remain the work of a dedicated few. If the latter then the increase likely will not be all that great as the increase will largely be driven by the increase of time recorded by that small percentage... and odds are the increase for them will be less than the overall increase for the population. Think of it this way. They are already spending a fair amount of time and effot to catch those invasions of privacy already.. thus they don't have as much room to grow as the general population with a device such as this.
Ultimatly I think social control will proove to be the true governing power over recording manners unless the technology is effectively outlawed... which is doubtfull. Of course if such a technology becomes commonplace then it is very likely that social norms regarding recording will change drastically to face that reality.
Personally I don't see what the problem is... and I hate having my picture taken. There are obvious means of crossing the lines... placing a cmaera on your shoe and taking up skirt pictures crosses the line.... but lets say your on a beach filled with dental floss clad babes (or shirtless hunks depending on your prefference )... how is taking a picture any differnt from staring ? Now if you take a shot and put it on a nationwide ad campaign or use it for some other method of making money off it then there is a problem ( with lots of legal precedence protecting your rights if you are the subject )... but just taking the picture ? Perhaps Rude, but certainly not any more illegal than oogling. So long as you are talking about a public venue. Legal precedence already says that if you are in a public venue then your presence is subject to being recorded.
I don't ask you to be me. I only ask you not expect me to be you.
Umm.. not quite. Vannevar Bush did not predict color photography.
Color photography was invented in 1850 by Levi Hill. Commercial color prints first appeared in 1903 with the Autochrome process. Kodachrome was widely available in 1945 when Bush wrote that article.
Or crap when it catches you flushing the toilet (or lou[sp?] for our British friends)
The views expressed are mine own and do not express the views of my employer.
The Aliens style helmetcams are not new, just the wireless networking to make it work.
It would have some uses in law enforcement. Perhaps it would stop the police from randomly beating peoples teeth out.
Or maybe one on every car.
But pitching it to average joe as wearable computing is just dumb.
This perpetual motion machine Lisa made is a joke, it just keeps getting faster and faster. - Homer
I wonder if anyone has thought of using biofeedback to work out which pictures (moments in time) the wearer thinks were interesting? Could be a combination of hearbeat and other bio signs... Mmmm all this would mean for me is a lot of pictures of pretty girls and worying motoring moments :-)
Now we can finally make Blair Witch Project 3: the Quickening.
anata sekai o kakumei surush ga nai deshou? Anata no susumu michi wa yoi shite arimasu.
New parents using this in the privacy of their homes capturing those moments when you not expecting them is the way this should be pushed.
How much would you pay to see your first steps, your first word?
This is just like that whole infinity statement: that an infinite number of monkeys on typewriters would eventually create works better than Shakespeare.
If you take ENOUGH pictures, SOME of them are going to end up being good. Just look at http://www.deviantart.com. I'd say such a process is inefficient but what do I know? Still, why not just take a god-damn photography class?
Can you imagine how great arguments would be with your SO? It would be a race to see who can find the proper clips to prove what was said.
Or at work, so you could playback exactly what you were told to do when everything blows up.
Somehow, I just don't think these things will make most people happy.
The strong do what they can, while the weak suffer what they must.
There's an upcoming Workshop on Wearable Camears and Camera Phones, on April 12th, in Toronto. Several people at this event will be wearing eyetap cameras, sending live video to the Internet.
since the camera is already headmounted and takes random crap shots how about this:
1.use a simple biofeedback machine-like circuit as a switch
2.determine the brainstate at the moment professional artists judge the snapshot and incorporate the average frequency of this into a tuneable range and/or user defined frequency(give em a knob to twist and even granny can use it)as a switch to pop the shutter.
3.now not only will this more accuratly capture the shots than computer determination but i wont have to pay an arm and a leg for this gizmo.
thank you
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
This is something I've been thinking about for a while. I'd like a wearable always-on camera like this -- but wish Tivo-esque functions. I don't want to actually record my whole day, but I know that most of the time if there's something really exciting that I wish I had on camera, I don't have time to react to it in time to turn on a camera.
So, have an always-on camera with a 30 or 60 minute buffer (or however long you can get). During normal use, it just cycles through the buffer over and over again. If you want to save something permanently, you can click a button (or however the control would function) to start saving what was happing one, five, ten, fifteen, 30, etc. minutes earlier. Then, that section of the buffer would be marked as permanent memory, and you don't have to worry about reacting in time to save those funny/exciting moments!
Punctanym: alternate spelling of words using punctuation or numerals in place of some or all of its letters; see 'leet'
Reminds me of Snow Crash....
GrpA
Enjoy science fiction? "Turing Evolved" - AI, Mecha, Androids and rail-gun battles. What more could you want?
*Walks into house*
"Take off your shoes.. and sunglasses"
meh, as long as it doesn't become too small (so people can't notice you're using one), then it really shouldn't be a problem..
If they can do this with a contact lense, it might be worth my time.