The threat of the ubiquity of cameras as a means of surveillance and state control no longer exists. There’s been a diametric shift of power from the state to the citizen as cameras become increasingly more accessible and technologically advanced. We as individual/citizens no longer need to fear to the dystopic visions of the future portrayed by Bentham, Huxley, Orwell. Even though we haven’t fully escaped the watchful eye(s) of the state, we’re much better equipped these days to combat the state with our own surveillance and monitoring of them.Even if we’re not capturing images or recording with our camera phones (purchased for less than $100), the possibility of being watched is just as threatening and capable of modifying behavior as actual observation.
I don’t know where the future of personal media devices is headed but I’m inspired by a quote from Karim Rashid in the documentary Objectified, “Why do we feel like we need to keep revisiting the archetype over and over and over again? Digital cameras for example, in which their format, proportion, the fact that they’re horizontal rectangles, are modeled off the original silver film camera. So, in turn it’s the film that defines the shape of the camera. All of a sudden our digital cameras have no film. So why on earth do we have the same shape we have?”
I conjecture then:
- It will become increasingly less expensive to provide sophisticated software and hardware,
- the form and/or presentation of the camera will change
- and it will decrease in size
And what I find even more interesting than the way cameras will change (hopefully) the relationship between the citizen and the state, is the way cameras will transform our personal lives.
Will cameras provide yet another data set for us to interrogate our own lives/habits/others? Will it lead us to pathologize self-monitoring to the point where we can no longer function? Turn us all into Narcissus? Perhaps that’s going a little too far… But I do foresee cameras contributing to the deluge of data, propagating across networks/feeds, and maybe also changing the way we communicate with each other (image superceding text).