I Am a Camera

Appropriate use of technology, or Orwellian nightmare? You decide.

An Associated Press article by Holly Fox reported this week that a documentary filmmaker whose right eye was removed after being damaged plans to use a camera fitted into a prosthetic eye to watch others. And not just to observe them, but to record their every movement for his next film.

Call Rob Spence the real Six Million Dollar Man, or one of Star Trek’s machine-humanoid hybrid Borgs… Whatever the moniker, this “eye spy” intends to become “a human surveillance machine” and explore whether people “are sleepwalking into an Orwellian society.

Even though he’ll film his subjects without their knowledge, he will obtain their permission before using the footage in his film.

I’m torn about whether this is the most appropriate use of new technology ever, or the next step in removing what little is left of our sense of privacy. Whatever your conclusion, it’s clear that the “wearable computer” movement has reached a very real and, um, eye-catching new level.—P.B.