Skip to main content

Smile, you’re always on camera! Now how did we get here?

Nearly every dystopian story worth a damn, from 1984 to Brave New World, envisions a version of the future in which its populace is subject to constant surveillance. There are cameras everywhere, monitoring silently, collecting information. Usually, it’s a totalitarian government, corporation, or other Big Brother figure that does the peeping. What many futurists failed to predict, however, is that we were destined to become equal offenders.

Ask yourself — when was the last time you left your home without some sort of camera on your person? From exposing police brutality to filtering every sunset lo-fi through Instagram, the near ubiquity of tiny cameras is changing the way we see the world. And it’s been a long time coming.

When was the last time you left your home without some sort of camera on your person?

The history of wearable cameras stretches back even further than the tiny, shady devices you could find in your friendly neighborhood spy shop for years. Cameras played a big role in the early work of the godfather of wearable computing, Steve Mann, as far back as the early 1980s. The MIT inventor’s Digital Eye project incorporates a camera in one of its lenses to digitize real-world objects in order to create an augmented reality interface.

Not surprisingly, cameras also play a major role in Google Glass, considered by many a spiritual successor to Mann’s pioneering work in wearable computing. In the early version of Google’s much-discussed headmounted display, the camera is more of a secondary feature, allowing users to take images, record videos and teleconference.

A decade or so ago, cameras became so cheap that we got into the habit of adding them to every piece of consumer electronics, whether it made any particular sense or not. It follows, then, that they would make their way onto our wearables. Heck, we’ve even seen smartwatches with awkwardly placed cameras that seem to exist for the sake of adding another feature to the spec sheet.

The true breakthrough in wearable camera technology occurred in 2006, with the introduction of the first digital GoPro Hero camera. A previous version of the action camera actually utilized 35mm film, but the product was born of the same initial impulse: to give athletes — surfers, in the case of the camera’s inventor — the ability to capture their own footage, since photographers and videographers are rarely afforded the ability to get that close to the action.

Steve Mann, Digital Eye project
Steve Mann, Digital Eye project Image used with permission by copyright holder

For the GoPro, that meant making a device that was small, rugged and capable of being attached to vehicles and people. Naturally, the GoPro captured more than just extreme sport footage — it capture the public’s imagination. Manufacturers were quick to jump on board, which most major electronics companies offering some take on the action camera space, including, most recently, HTC’s delightful periscope-shaped Re camera.

GoPro afforded the opportunity to capture footage new and fascinating ways. It also presented a sort of versatility that has continued to bring out the creativity go its users, attaching the camera to everything from pets to musical instruments.

But arguably the camera’s strongest point was its embrace of the first-person viewpoint, through mounts made for the body. In a selfie-obsessed culture, giving others the opportunity to see things from your point of view is arguably the strongest form of technological self-expression. Point the camera on yourself is all well and good, but what if it was possible to give the world an idea of what’s like being you, while you go about your extreme sport-centric lifestyle?

More importantly, who wouldn’t want to experience that sort of adrenaline rush from the remote comfort of their laptop screen?

GoPro-Brian-Heater_
(Image courtesy of GoPro) Image used with permission by copyright holder

The notion of lifelogging takes the next logical step. In a world of ubiquitous camera access, why limit our broadcasts to those somewhat rare occasions when we’re base jumping from an erupting volcano into a tank of great white sharks (Thursdays for me)? We’re all unique and fascinating individuals leading unique and fascinating lives. Why not just clip on a camera that never shuts off.

The concept of lifelogging dates back at least as far as the advent of wearable cameras. Mann donned a wearable Web cam and began streaming his life 24 hours a day in 1994, a full four years before The Truman Show opened the American public up to seemingly realistic possibility that we’re already on camera 24 hours a day, anyway. And hey, if the world is going to be watching what you’re doing at all times anyway, shouldn’t you at least have the opportunity to frame what it sees?

GoPro afforded the opportunity to capture footage new and fascinating ways.

Like Mann’s other innovations, it’s taken most of the rest of the world decades to catch on. In recent years, however, a perfect storm of technological innovation and the culture of self-obsession have made commercial lifelogging cameras a reality. I was pretty excited about checking out the Memoto when I first met with the company’s founders a few South by Southwests ago.

The device — since rebranded the Narrative Clip — is an SD card-sized (albeit a bit thicker) camera that clips onto your lapel. You wear it around and it takes pictures. And that’s about it. It simply takes pictures at regular intervals. It’s not intended to replace the camera on your phone. Heck, it’s not even intended to snap a photo of an amazing occurrence before you’re able to pull that phone out of your pocket.

As a sidenote, I reviewed the camera and wasn’t particularly impressed with what it could do. I’m also not entirely sure that lifelogging is a bandwagon I’m particularly interested in pursuing. Admit it: You’ve never been curious how many cups of green tea I consume while working on one of these things. Nor should you be.

Like the GoPro, before it, it will take some truly compelling footage to convince the world to shell out for wearable lifelogging cameras (particularly with the $230 Narrative is currently asking). When that arrives, however, you can bet a lot more people will be wearing cameras on their person.

But at least in this dystopian future, we’re able to control where some of them are pointed.

Brian Heater
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Brian Heater has worked at number of tech pubs, including Engadget, PCMag and Laptop. His writing has appeared in Spin…
Digital Trends’ Top Tech of CES 2023 Awards
Best of CES 2023 Awards Our Top Tech from the Show Feature

Let there be no doubt: CES isn’t just alive in 2023; it’s thriving. Take one glance at the taxi gridlock outside the Las Vegas Convention Center and it’s evident that two quiet COVID years didn’t kill the world’s desire for an overcrowded in-person tech extravaganza -- they just built up a ravenous demand.

From VR to AI, eVTOLs and QD-OLED, the acronyms were flying and fresh technologies populated every corner of the show floor, and even the parking lot. So naturally, we poked, prodded, and tried on everything we could. They weren’t all revolutionary. But they didn’t have to be. We’ve watched enough waves of “game-changing” technologies that never quite arrive to know that sometimes it’s the little tweaks that really count.

Read more
Digital Trends’ Tech For Change CES 2023 Awards
Digital Trends CES 2023 Tech For Change Award Winners Feature

CES is more than just a neon-drenched show-and-tell session for the world’s biggest tech manufacturers. More and more, it’s also a place where companies showcase innovations that could truly make the world a better place — and at CES 2023, this type of tech was on full display. We saw everything from accessibility-minded PS5 controllers to pedal-powered smart desks. But of all the amazing innovations on display this year, these three impressed us the most:

Samsung's Relumino Mode
Across the globe, roughly 300 million people suffer from moderate to severe vision loss, and generally speaking, most TVs don’t take that into account. So in an effort to make television more accessible and enjoyable for those millions of people suffering from impaired vision, Samsung is adding a new picture mode to many of its new TVs.
[CES 2023] Relumino Mode: Innovation for every need | Samsung
Relumino Mode, as it’s called, works by adding a bunch of different visual filters to the picture simultaneously. Outlines of people and objects on screen are highlighted, the contrast and brightness of the overall picture are cranked up, and extra sharpness is applied to everything. The resulting video would likely look strange to people with normal vision, but for folks with low vision, it should look clearer and closer to "normal" than it otherwise would.
Excitingly, since Relumino Mode is ultimately just a clever software trick, this technology could theoretically be pushed out via a software update and installed on millions of existing Samsung TVs -- not just new and recently purchased ones.

Read more
How does Garmin measure stress, and is it really accurate?
Garmin Vivomove Sport dial close up. Credits: Garmin official.

Garmin watches are known for their robust activity tracking, but that's not all these fitness watches can do. Over the years, the company has been adding wellness features to its lineup of watches. These new health-focused metrics allow people to analyze their fitness and identify outside factors affecting their performance. One such factor is stress, which is something Garmin watches actively measures.
But you may be wondering—exactly how does Garmin measure stress? In this article, we break down how Garmin measures stress and delve into the accuracy of this metric. Should you trust your stress score? Read on to find out.

Is Garmin's stress score accurate?

Read more