I've read a short post a few days ago about a new gadget - a small videocamera that looks like an earpiece of a mobile phone, records continuously, can store a few hours of video and with a press of a button will save a clip of the last 30 seconds if you saw something interesting.
It's nothing revolutionary - just another gadget as electronics gets smarter and smaller, but it's being inconspicuous and the "always recording" mode made me think about the future that's almost here already.
It made me think of the "no cameras" signs we see here and there, like in airports or museums, where it's OK to see something with our own eyes but not to record, often for security reasons. It's quite useless even today, since any real "bad guys" would have no problems to conceal equipment and take a photo or video. But as such gadgets become small, cheap, and ubiquitous I think it may become quite common to just record everything happening around you during the day and then save the interesting bits for later. And preventing the general public from doing so will be difficult.
And I also thought of our expectation of privacy during our everyday life. We become more and more used to being photographed and filmed, either directly by someone we know, or just by chance, being in someones frame or perhaps just being caught in an embarrassing moment by a Google Street View car... And the younger generation will be accustomed to the notion of possibly being recorded at any moment, just as they live a much more publicly open life on the social networks, even if we have difficulties accepting this idea today, as you can read in this story (the motorcyclist was acquitted).
What do you think?
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