Netcam:
(various versions of rig,
leading toward current 'net connected WearCam)
Put
yourself in my shoes and see the world from my perspective.
Pictured above is an old communications antenna array on copper-lined helmet,
not presently used. Now I use the "visualfilter" (pictured below).
Through the VisualFilter,
I perceive my surroundings by "viewing" rather than seeing,
and this also means that another person can "view" the world exactly as I do.
Closing the loop in this way (e.g. using the
visual filter explained below) enables me to record
exactly what I experience, as opposed to merely putting a camera
on my head (above picture)
in the style of Letterman, 60 Minutes, or the like,
where the camera would not necessarily record exactly what the viewer
was looking at.
Science fiction writers have
wondered what it would be like if we
could tap into the visual path from eye to brain, routing
the visual information elsewhere.
I doubt this is possible using today's technology,
but using this camera system with radio communications,
which I call "NetCam", I can presently send my visual field
anywhere in the world, using the internet as a communications medium.
NetCam together with the World Wide Web,
means that others can see the world from my perspective.
Go ahead:
put yourself in my shoes - see the world
from my point of view.
The visual filter
Sending visual information from my head-mounted cameras
to one or more remote processors
(like some SGI Reality Engines on the Internet)
and then receiving a processed version of the visual information back
at my head mounted display, gives rise to what I call the `Visual Filter'.
While I can't put a Reality Engine in my backpack, I can still pipe
my visual world through one or more such computers and get the same
effect.
A science fiction writer might envision
implanting a computer anywhere in the world between
the eye and the brain, but this is a long way off.
Right now I'll live with my bulky communications equipment.
Simple processing like turning the image
upside-down (like the upside-down prisms that people used to use to see
if someone could learn to live in an upside-down world) would be possible,
but of course there are far more interesting possibilities.
It's fun being a cyborg
leading a somewhat nomadic lifestyle.
Applications of VisualFilter and NetCam:
There are other cameras on the Web, but as far as I know,
this is the only wearable one
(please let me
know(mann@eecg.toronto.edu)
if you find another wearable
WebCam
somewhere, or if you are interested
in building one).
Privacy issues of NetCam and other video cameras:
NetCam has raised some interesting privacy issues. Rather than limit
the discussion to privacy
issues of NetCam alone, let us look at the
big picture - at the broader societal issues surrounding visual
privacy.
NetCam has allowed us to see privacy in a different
light, and to reconsider the notion of visual privacy. In
particular, consider
privacy issues of wearable cameras (like NetCam)
versus surveillance cameras
Other diversions that may appear from time to time,
in place of, or in addition to NetCam
to further delay my thesis:
- A radio controlled car with a small camera inside it (e.g. take a tour
of my office or the hallway)
- Self-destructing comics; my life is a comic book, when I put text on
each picture in a sequence of images. Comics self-destruct by virtue
of the circular buffer effect. Best highlights saved...
- Highlights of my life; various experiences I'd like to share;
fading memories, that get compressed more and more as they become
older and older, simulating the way the brain forgets things.
"The purpose of art is to lay bare the questions which have been
hidden by the answers"
-James Baldwin
Wireless WearCam credits and acknowledgements
Sending visual information from my head-mounted cameras
to one or more remote processors
(like some SGI Reality Engines on the Internet)
and then receiving a processed version of the visual information back
at my head mounted display, gives rise to what I call the `Visual Filter'.
While I can't put a Reality Engine in my backpack, I can still pipe
my visual world through one or more such computers and get the same
effect.
A science fiction writer might envision
implanting a computer anywhere in the world between
the eye and the brain, but this is a long way off.
Right now I'll live with my bulky communications equipment.