Re: watch the lives of others, get cash prizes!

[chris () blask org]

--- On Tue, 10/13/09, Alex Eckelberry <AlexE () sunbelt-software com> wrote:

> See?  It's very good to be watched.  Keeps you on your BEST behavior!

Oh, I know what you are saying, Alex.  But what has really changed?  Since the first person pointed a parallel-port 
camera out their window and started posting jpegs one after another to a web page - what's new?  The scale?

Pick your nose on your front porch in Dorset, Ontario in 1983 and no-one had a digital camera - live or Memorex - but 
maybe a Polaroid got snapped.  In 1963 the picture would never have gotten captured at all, but Mrs. Smith saw it and 
you know she told everyone in the quilting circle she saw the dirty hippie with half his hand disappearing up his 
greasy snout.  In 1863 it was a rare week's journey from Dorset to the City to the south and you lived with a hundred 
people who never got more than a mile away from each other and everyone else knew more about how you picked your nose 
than you knew yourself.  You probably weren't living in a home by yourself anyway - the generation before and after and 
parallel to each side probably shared a few rooms, or the fortunate few had servants recording every pick and sharing 
it at the tavern.

I guess my interest is more in considering where all this is taking us than in trying to figure out how to stop it.  
Unless I am significantly mistaken there is going to be no roll-back of the digital camera nor law against pointing 
them at the street in front of your house or the inside your store.  I think it will be some time (if at all) before 
the government cameras already everywhere (particularly in places like England) are all streamed live to the web, but 
if the quirky experiment that started this thread turns out to have a surprisingly dramatic impact on lowering crime 
then we just might see public opinion turn on a relative dime on that topic, too.

I'm not the author of the world's trends, only a very lowly editor.  I'll be content if I can read the copy well enough 
to change an interesting comma or two along the way.

:~)

-chris 



      

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