These will be all the rage at future demonstrations

[andrewducker]

Twenty years ago, David Brin wrote about the death of privacy in "Earth" (later, he wrote a non-fiction book covering this in more detail, The Transparent Society. The lynchpin piece of tech behind this was the ability to record everything that people saw during the day, and then post it online. Which was pretty forward thinking for 1990.

Today, jwz posted a link to this:

It has a five hour memory. It records all of the time, but only starts saving when you hit record - at which point it starts at the beginning of its 30-second buffer. In other words, you see something suspicious, hit the button, and get the thing that you saw recorded for later perusal.

If I was going to be somewhere the police were going to be, well, policing, then considering the death of Ian Tomlinson, and the intermittent bad behaviour which occurs, I'd be wearing one of these things. Heck, faced with a group of people all wearing recording devices, would you want to cause trouble?

Next up - software to take the output from a few hundred of these, map them together, and produce a 3D playback that you can then pan a virtual camera through...

Comments

[dalglir.livejournal.com]

I read the functionality slightly differently and it would certainly be more useful at demos: It constantly records with a 30 second buffer. When you hit the button it saves the _last_ 30 seconds.

"Looxcie is always on, continuously videoing – there's no record button. When you experience something you want to share, just click the Instant Clip button to save a clip of the last thirty seconds."

This way, you get to record stuff without having to know if what you're about to witness is worth recording. It's already being recorded, it just needs to be saved.

[andrewducker]

Sorry, that was what I meant by:
"you hit record - at which point it starts at the beginning of its 30-second buffer. In other words, you see something suspicious, hit the button, and get the thing that you saw recorded for later perusal."
But I clearly wasn't explaining myself well!

[dalglir.livejournal.com]

Interestingly, it _only_ saves the 30 seconds already in the buffer when you hit the button. Which is a shame for a device with a 5 hour recording memory.

[andrewducker]

That is a shame. Still, if it's at all popular then you'll see other models which can do more.