In my Reason column this week I took inspiration from the fact that I will soon be sporting a Narrative Clip life-logging camera, and I wrote about our coming sousveillance future when everyone will be recording everyone else with wearable cameras. Lo and behold, looks like our good friend Fred Smith of CEI last night lived that future.
That’s a video posted by a biker who apparently wears a camera on his helmet and records his rides. He was calling the police to report a car blocking the bike lane when Fred and his wife Fran asked him not to. One thing I find fascinating is that being recorded, their instinct was to record back with the cameras on their phones.
As wearables become mainstream we’re going to begin to see many more videos like this, and I leave it to the reader to decide whether that’s a good thing. Sousveillance, whether we like it or not, will be a giant accountability machine. Obviously, recording the behavior of police and other government agents will help keep them accountable, but we’ll also be recording each other. Indeed, this biker wears a camera in part, I’m sure, to hold others accountable should anything happen to him on the road. What’s interesting is that what we will be held accountable for will be not just traffic accidents, but also sidewalk interactions that until now would have remained private and anonymous. Do check out my column in which I go into much more detail about the coming mainstreaming of sousveillance.
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