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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.""
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..
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.
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...
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!
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.
The concept of this, apparently, is that you will never miss an important event or moment or anything. But that's not quite so. You'll only capture things that YOUR OWN EYES were looking at. If someone says "hey look over there" and that thing is gone, you're still screwed.
I would say that, in about a year, there are approximately 10 minutes worth even recording. Why would I want to wear a stupid camera and deal with it being confiscated or the video later being used against me if I'm raided before being able to delete it - and most of all, deal with 365 DAYS worth of video just to take the 10 minutes I might even remotely give a fuck about.
Whatever happened to the day where you just EXPERIENCED MOMENTS rather than experiencing them through a fucking lens? If you weren't there -- TOUGH!
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
Stranger things have happened. I still can't see why webcams are popular.
Bceause they make phone sex so much more interesting.
Sattinger's Law: It works better if you plug it in.
This will be all fun and games until the first subpoena.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
Atleast the police would have the evidence that it was her who did it as long as she didn't hit the camera while plunging the knife into your chest.
Wow, what a great idea.
Wait a second, I think I've heard that before... in the article. Where they said they've already implented a "That's Interesting" button. It keeps the last, what was it, 30 or so minutes in short-term memory, and if you press the button, it commits it to a more permament storage.
Seriously, though, with the way storage is getting larger and larger for cheaper and cheaper, it shouldn't be long before marking as something only marks it so it stands out, and everything stays recorded, so it can be kept indefinitely. After all, keeping track of everything you see could be useful at certain times, like after you hear about the child abduction that happened in the mall parking lot right around the time you were there - you might be able to scan the recordings and find something helpful.
And that's without considering what image processing (more advanced than what's stated in the article) could do in the future.
"You know your god is man-made when he hates all the same people you do."
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).
>If someone says "hey look over there" and that thing is gone, you're still screwed.
not at all. that's where THEIR camera comes in useful.
besides, a camera that's on all the time would give uterly useless crappy shots! photgraphy is about composition, light, technique...
Initially, the idea put me off horribly. Yes, I'm a bit of a privacy nut and all that. But then I thought - I would *love* being able to watch footage of my girfriend and me taking our first walk six years ago, back when we weren't quite boyfriend and girlfriend yet but somehow the next day we were.
Then again, if I'd worn a camera like this that day... I don't think the next six years would have happened the same way. So in reality you probably would get junk and junk only, because for those moments that are worth preserving you would switch the damn thing off without a second thought.
"Only the small secrets need to be protected. The big ones are kept secret by public incredulity." - Marshall McLuhan
Hurray for me...i officially added nothing to this discussion
--I swear, it was a case of isolated idiopathic hemibalissmus
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...
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.
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.