Filmmaker Working On Eye-Socket Camera 114
An anonymous reader writes "Wired has a story about Rob Spence, a Canadian filmmaker who plans to have a mini camera installed in his prosthetic eye. 'A camera module will have to be connected to a transmitter inside the prosthetic eye that can broadcast the captured video footage. To boost the signal, he says he can wear another transmitter on his belt. A receiver attached to a hard drive in a backpack could capture that information and then send it to another device that uploads everything to a web site in real time. ... Even though his project is still in its early stages, Spence says many people have already told him they wouldn't be comfortable being filmed. "People are more scared of a center-left documentary maker with an eye than the 400 ways they are filmed every day at the school, the subway, the mall," he says. He hopes he will help get people thinking about privacy, how surveillance cameras and the footage they record are being used and accessed.'"
Spence runs a blog for the 'Eyeborg Project,' as he calls it, and has recently posted a video about the progress they're making.
Back to the future (Score:5, Interesting)
I always believed that 20 years from now, technology will allow us to keep a constant record of all that we see. It will be great for keeping memories of the kids, sure. It will also completely change the way we interact. The most fascinating part of this future is that very strong ethical, privacy and legal limits will have to be put in place.
Think of the switch from analog audio to digital. With analog, you could record, but you couldn't store forever without losing quality. Stuff eventually got lost, or forgotten. It's a different ball-game when information stays around forever, easily accessible. Google Search taught us as much.
Bottom line: there is no technological answer to this, it will have to come from principles and laws. Anyone can steal mail from my mailbox, there is no lock. But people don't. Let's see how we can create similar principles for digital information.
babylon 5 (Score:3, Interesting)
been there done that
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosthetics_in_fiction [wikipedia.org]
Re:Back to the future (Score:3, Interesting)
will allow us to keep a constant record of all that we see.
Except for sex and the occasional witness of a police beating, all I can envision from that is a bastard-child of Twitter and YouTube...as if those two weren't bad enough.
Why not mount enhancements(IR or other extended-spectrum sensitivity, long-range zoom, etc) inside the prosthesis and find a way to feed the visual back into the other eye(and eventually to the visual cortex itself) to give the patient superhuman sight? Now we're talkin', baby.
Re:Back to the future (Score:3, Interesting)
yeah, yeah, I saw the "Final Cut". the guy gets killed for what he's got in his head
Re:Back to the future (Score:4, Interesting)
I think something else will happen.
I think society will change.
Speaking strictly for American society (though I fully expect the same to happen in other first-world countries, though perhaps at different rates), we've long had various scruples that, while perhaps not bad, don't make the most sense. For instance, the general requirement that we remain clothed; or, in a more tame sense, that men may go bare-chested but women may not (add to that further with much of women's fashion). There are reasons to wear clothes, but shame for the human body has always been an odd one. Also, it's perfectly fine (by society) to talk about someone behind their back, but never to tell someone they're bad/ugly and give constructive criticism. Who cares if you're helping someone out with that (whether or not they want the help), you should be talking about it to someone who can't do squat like some sort of weasel!
As television has brought us pictures of war sooner and sooner, and VHS everything else, we began to become more and more "open" about things. The internet has only increased this, as well as allowing for amateur footage of... well, everything.
I think that instead of all these huge restrictions being put on such devices, society's view will shift as it is further exposed. There will be a brief push-back, but that will subside. Over time, people will become more and more relaxed about various subjects and previous "taboos". We saw it happen with black rights, women's rights, and interracial marriage. Right now we're seeing it happen with homosexuality and marijuana.
There's always the chance of another Roman-style (or was it Greek?) tragedy happening where we suddenly regress a millennium, but if we continue the path we are bound to become a society that has almost no social bounds outside of actual harm. Perhaps not in 20 years, and maybe not even in 100, but I believe it will happen, especially if content expands exponentially.
Re:Back to the future (Score:1, Interesting)
will allow us to keep a constant record of all that we see.
Except for sex and the occasional witness of a police beating, all I can envision from that is a bastard-child of Twitter and YouTube...as if those two weren't bad enough.
Then you're not very imaginative.
I would use it all the time. Can't remember how that thing you just took apart goes back together? Rewind and take a look. Can't remember if you locked the door/turned off the stove/flushed the toilet? Rewind and take a look. Got lost? Rewind and retrace your steps.