In Less Than Five Years, 45 Billion Cameras Will Be Watching Us (fastcompany.com)

An anonymous reader writes: It was a big deal for many when Apple added a second camera to the back of the iPhone 7 Plus last year. In five years, that will be considered quaint. By then, smartphones could sport 13 cameras, allowing them to capture 360-degree, 3D video; create complex augmented reality images onscreen; and mimic with digital processing the optical zoom and aperture effects of an SLR. That's one of the far-out, but near-term, predictions in a new study by LDV Capital, a VC firm that invests in visual technologies such as computer vision. It polled experts at its own portfolio companies and beyond to predict that by 2022, the total number of cameras in the world will reach about 45 billion. Jaw-dropping as that figure is, it doesn't seem so crazy when you realize that today there are already about 14 trillion cameras in the world, according to data from research firms such as Gartner. Next to phones, other camera-hungry products will include robots (including autonomous cars), security cameras, and smart home products like the new Amazon Echo Show, according to LDV. UPDATE: Story has been updated to reflect the updates made to The Fast Company article. The outreach figures are 45 billion cameras by 2022, not trillion.

Comments

Obligatory XKCD

[nitehawk214]

Soon there will be trillions of cameras all around us.

https://xkcd.com/605/

Video - The next weapon

[geekmux]

It's already been proven that software today can manipulate audio and create words you've never said based on samples.

Next-gen video manipulation will be able to put you at the scene of any crime, and we all know how valuable video evidence is in a courtroom today.

Our legal system needs to adjust for this abuse of technology. It will not be able to in time, which will make video evidence the next weapon against innocent victims. Watch and see.

Re:Video - The next weapon

[geekmux]

I'm not sure why you think our legal system will not be able to adjust in time. It would be a trivial thing for a defense attorney to discredit such a video. He could easily just make his own video of the defendant strolling along the bottom of the Marianas Trench or bro-hugging Donald Trump in the oval office. The lawyers will take care of the problem, when it becomes one. Because that's what they do.

You are delusional. The average citizen today cannot afford to defend themselves against the most trivial accusations.

And you want to assume the average citizen could afford a lawyer to spend countless hours manipulating video and creating an effective defense against those who are armed with the technical resources and budget to frame victims?

Expensive lawyers take care of the problem. The rest lose. THAT is our legal system today, and tomorrow.

Re:I'm okay with it

[michelcolman]

How can there be 14 trillion cameras in the world today, as the summary claims? With around 7 billion people in the world, that's 2000 cameras for every living person on earth. I think someone's math is off somewhere.

Re:I'm okay with it

[mikael]

There are 2.5 billion smartphones in use. If each of those had two CCD sensors, that's 5 billion.
https://www.statista.com/stati...

245 million CCTV systems were installed in 2014. If that is a yearly estimate, then you could extrapolate over a decade.
https://technology.ihs.com/532...

That's another 2.5 billion.

If you look at a sales figures of digital SLR cameras vs smartphones, digital cameras are in decline:
https://www.dpreview.com/news/...
That puts smartphones at 1.5 billion/year. That could be extrapolated as well.

Possibly 14 billion, but not trillion.