Would You Wear a Camcorder on Your Ear?

http://gadgetwise.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/01/would-you-wear-a-camcorder-on-your-ear/

by davewiner • 16 years ago

35 35 16 years ago

gadgetwise.blogs.nytimes.com

hugh32• 16 years ago

A neat device, for which I personally have no use. The idea of wearing it around all the time just in case you happen to see something interesting seems pretty terrible... how often do you see something so interesting that you really want everybody to see it in a grainy 15fps video?

Folks who might like it:

1. Model rocket types (or remote-controlled planes, helicopters etc)

2. Perverts

timthorn• 16 years ago

3. People with Alzheimer’s Disease: http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/cambridge/projects/se...

randallsquared• 16 years ago

3. Anyone who blogs or twitters or talks to anyone about their life, currently

"I wish I had thought to take a picture/video of that event."

"I wish I could remember that person's name that I met last week."

This is another incremental step toward a searchable, verifiable, rewindable stream of your life, and the benefits are enormous. A lot of people I know, including myself, use search all day every day. I probably use Google a hundred times a day or more, for the most trivial questions, or just to see if there's a quick known answer to some problem I'm thinking about. I am really, really looking forward to being able to do something similar with my real life.

I've organized my life around simplicity of schedule, so I think this will be even more useful for people who are constantly on the go and trying to remember what they need to do next and who they're doing it with and for. The stuff that various email apps do now with recognizing appointment language and offering to add things to your calendar, for example, seems a natural for applying to realtime life.

smackay• 16 years ago

4. Birders. Being able to positively identify that Acrocephalus warbler, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acrocephalus, that just disappeared into that bush destined never to return would be a blessing to just about everyone I know. Digital cameras are already fulfilling this role to a certain extent, but being able to record everything just in case you need to go back and double-check would be an enormous benefit.

Having said that, "the one that got away" is a big part of the culture and being able to definitely identify everything (as least much as it is possible with the technology) would probably end up diminishing the experience and generally take the fun out of it.

AngryParsley• 16 years ago

I've heard of one lifelogger who has video of the first time he met his wife. He didn't know it would be an important occasion until much later.

I don't understand complaints about resolution/storage/etc. Those will only get better with time. So instead of objecting to the idea itself you're basically saying, "I'm going to start using this 18 months after people who think it's worthwhile now."

hkuo• 16 years ago

It seems a better idea would have been to embed them into some form of eyewear, a form factor that currently exists rather than create a new one.

icegreentea• 16 years ago

This form factor already kinda exists. It's almost like a bluetooth headset. Granted, it's still kinda obnoxious.

toxicflavor• 16 years ago

A voyeur's dream come true.

patio112• 16 years ago

A few iterations on this and it would be excellent for law enforcement. (See "Halting State" for a future Britain in which cops are required to wear them.) It is also one of the easiest protections against police abuse of authority which you can actually sell to good cops.

motters• 16 years ago

Small helmet or hat mounted cameras have been available to the police in the UK for the last few years. I don't think they're ubiquitous yet, but it seems like only a matter of time before they are. A ubiquitous sousveillance situation seems like the best possible outcome for all concerned, and we seem to be already some way along that trajectory.

icey• 16 years ago

"Sousveillance": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sousveillance (it looked like an interesting word so I had to look it up)

yummyfajitas• 16 years ago

It would be excellent for law enforcement, provided cops are punished for dead time, and suspects always have access to the records.

I suspect the cops will be strongly against it.

splat• 16 years ago

I think many cops are in favor of it. If someone you give a ticket to files a bogus complaint against you, you can turn to the video to exonerate yourself. Nevertheless, there is a substantial fraction of police who are strongly against it. Here's an interview by Radley Balko with three law enforcement officials who are opposed to video recording of cops: http://reason.com/archives/2010/08/09/police-officers-dont-c...

pbiggar• 16 years ago

And vice-versa. I could see people wearing this on situations where they believe the police might act illegally, in particular during protests. It would probably need to stream directly to some online server, which perhaps this isn't equipped for.

jdavid2• 16 years ago

3 chapters left, and i highly recommend "halting state". it's a fun book that flips back and forth between the realverse and an online metaverse. the book mostly deals with the unraveling mystery behind a crime that happens in that metaverse.

i hope it get's optioned as a movie, it would make a great cyberpunk film.

bbuffone• 16 years ago

"If you’re obsessed with sharing your life in video..."

Are the people wearing this - sharing their live or the lives of those around them?

After watching the video it seemed that the only thing shared was the brief glimpse of the people which passed by.

angstrom2• 16 years ago

"If, for instance, you’re hiking and a bear crosses your trail, you’ve got it on video." At least when someone finds bear droppings and an ear piece they can put 2 and 2 together.

I see it mostly as a way of protecting yourself in court.

hugh32• 16 years ago

Do you get arrested for crimes you did not commit sufficiently often to make recording all your activities worthwhile, or is this primarily of value to the incredibly paranoid?

angstrom2• 16 years ago

For the incredibly paranoid and those that would otherwise use mini recorders to do the same thing with just audio. In those cases it would likely be better disguised by removing it from the ear piece. Mostly situations that would come up in small claims court where it's your word against theirs and whatever evidence you've managed to gather.

tel• 16 years ago

For a fascinating look into someone who records the entirety of their life, see Exit Through the Gift Shop. It was supposedly going to be all about enigmatic Banksy, but instead was far more interesting by exploring one of his old friends turned embarrassment, a guy who for much of his adult life recorded everything on video.

(small spoiler: editing is NP complete)

RodgerTheGreat• 16 years ago

The "Gargoyles" from Snow Crash don't seem that far off base.

edit: Hey, what do you know: http://igargoyle.com/

nym2• 16 years ago

Hey, that's my site!

jamesbritt• 16 years ago

"When turned on, the camera continuously records video in the mp4 format, and can store up to five hours of footage before it loops back and begins overwriting the oldest video. "

The phone software needs to be able to instantly upload the video to a safe location. If someone wants to give you shit, but knows whatever has been recorded is well out of their reach, they may be considerate in their actions. No more police or soldiers confiscating recording equipment and destroying the data.

Luckily, such software exists, so this could be quite a good thing for protest and civil disobedience activities.

TeMPOraL• 16 years ago

I can imagine reporters using ear cameras. As far as I remember, there was even a scene on Star Trek: Generations movie, when journalists used something similar in principle: http://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/gallery/factfiles/federati... and http://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/gallery/factfiles/federati...

metachris• 16 years ago

Android appearently is Looxcie's platform of choice: http://looxcie.com/looxcie-app.html (no iPhone support yet). Now they just need to link it up with ustream or other live streaming services!

Looxcie will be interesting to use at demonstrations or other events where you may want to immediately publish a video after something happens (before eg. that video is taken from you).

xyzzyz• 16 years ago

What if we make this gadget even smaller and embed it into, say, glasses, then connect it with portable hard drive? I am too lazy to do the calculations, but assuming the disk space for a month worth of footage costs $300, it is not out of reach of average person. Maybe our children will have complete record of their lives, will always be able to recall what happened to them, what are the names of people they met, what they have agreed upon, what really happened during last blackout etc. They will never have to search for the lost things, they will just rewind the video log to see where they had put them.

The downside is that this limits the privacy and makes people do what they are supposed to do, and not what the actually want to do -- their boss (parents, teacher etc.) will just look up the video and see what one had done at his work (school) time. We also really would not want anyone to browse our life record as they wish. The data will need to be heavily encrypted and protected from unauthorized access.

dctoedt• 16 years ago

Litigation counsel will have a field day (and make a ton of money) demanding, then reviewing, life-log records of people associated with lawsuits and/or litigants.

sasmith• 16 years ago

I wish I had been. I heard a car crash last night, and when I got downstairs, it became clear that someone had hit a parked car (hard) and was fleeing the scene. I actively tried to catch the license plate, but could only pick up the first three characters, and even those I'm not confident of. Not sure if 15fps on 480x320 would have helped (especially in bad lighting), but I'd love to have that footage and find out.

awakeasleep• 16 years ago

I've been thinking about this concept ever since microsoft debuted a pendant 'life recorder' a few years ago.

I don't know if you've ever read 'The Stars, My Destination", but it's an old science fiction book based on the idea of a change in our abilities that completely destabilizes the current manner of human life.

I believe ubiquitous recording would be an equivalent change. It may be my warped perspective, but I believe an incredible amount of our society is build upon lies and untruths. This sort of technology will create an enormous, disruptive amount of accountability to every single person affected by it.

andrewacove• 16 years ago

I hope someone makes software that can bookmark all the interesting/active moments in the video for me. Going back through the video looking for highlights doesn't seem like a great use of time.

nym2• 16 years ago

I bought the Looxcie, and reviewed it here:

http://igargoyle.com/archives/2010/09/looxcie_review.html

Overall, it's a compelling product, but the Android app to connect to the camera feels like a beta.

bond• 16 years ago

I see the sex industry go for this, only needs more resolution...

jdavid2• 16 years ago

after reading the comments, it seems that the notion of interestingness is tightly coupled with this technology.

how would one filter video for important or interesting moments? socially in public? or privately with an algorithm, agent, or ai?

i think as data becomes essentially free and infinite, the need for non-human help to filter through it becomes necessary.

infinite in the star trek sense, meaning it's not actually infinite, but supply easily out strips consumption. st is not a resource limited economy

Would You Wear a Camcorder on Your Ear?

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