February 28, 2007
Hello to less privacy
Cellphone cameras continue to haunt both celebs and ordinary Joes. Can morals keep pace with technology? USA today doesn't think so.
"We no longer have to worry only of Big Brother government watching us. Now we have Little Brother to contend with, too — and he's got a camera phone.
"The days when something happens in front of a crowd and it's not captured on camera are over," says Josh Calder, a trend tracker at Social Technologies. "We have to assume anything we do in public is potentially going into the public record."
... Here's one possible peek at the future: More camera phones, more camera phone images, more people watching camera phone images — and little control over any of it.
"We do get pleasure and pain from other people's embarrassment — it makes us feel better about ourselves," says Cal State's Wehr. "We see people's failings and we're relieved: Thank God I didn't get drunk and take off my clothes."
Picture above left from Gawker Stalker, which tracks celebrity sightings around Manhattan called in by ordinary citizens and publishes them online. This one is of Sandra Bullocks spotted at a Starbucks in Soho yesterday.
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