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And actually there are cameras all over the place these days, especially in a business area or going into a business. Quite common for a business to have a camera covering its parking lot, but that also may get the street and the building across from it. Or an inside camera pointing toward the front of a store might also see the sidewalk, street, and businesses across the street.
Billy_J, true there are cameras planted all around in public areas, and I've come to not worry about that, but what if you discovered that your every move 24/7/365 is being watched for the idle entertainment of others?
Would you be able to behave naturally, comfortably?
Billy_J, true there are cameras planted all around in public areas, and I've come to not worry about that, but what if you discovered that your every move 24/7/365 is being watched for the idle entertainment of others?
Would you be able to behave naturally, comfortably?
Well if that includes going to the bathroom and "other personal things", I guess it would bother me at first as I am not an exhibitionist. But you gotta do what you gotta do, so I would think eventually I would just go ahead and do what natured required without thinking about it much.
Maybe like people in a prison. They don't get much privacy, toilet right there in the open, etc.
I recently read a book that got me thinking about exactly this topic. It was called The Circle by Dave Eggers. It's a near-future dystopian novel that explores the death of privacy, to the point where privacy is seen as "stealing" from others by not revealing yourself totally and constantly.
There is a lot of discussion in the book about how being followed by cameras constantly will make humanity "better" as no one would behave in way that's bad, dishonest, cruel, etc. But in reading that, I was thinking that I already avoid bad, dishonest, and cruel behavior, but I would still reject constant camera surveillance. To me, privacy is not about hiding my bad behavior, but about keeping a portion of myself to myself. In the culture that arises in the book, there is a large amount of peer pressure and shaming when a person chooses to have privacy even for short periods, as if they are "depriving" others of seeing and learning from their experiences. So if a person chooses to, say, go out in a rowboat alone for a few hours and enjoy nature, you'd have to face some people being suspicious, wanting to know what you were "up to," and other people who would shame you into feeling guilty, giving examples of some poor handicapped child who would never be able to row a rowboat and enjoy nature that way, and can only enjoy those things by watching you do it on your 24/7 online camera.
The book sort of avoids the issue of privacy regarding bathroom use and nudity, letting the characters turn off the sound on their cameras and aim them at the wall when they use the bathroom. But there are people in the book who talk about exposing even those things, so that shame can be eliminated; once we see everyone using the toilet or bathing or masturbating on camera every day, we'll no longer be embarrassed about it, and we'll all be fine with recording and broadcasting these things. So even these people in the book who embraced 24/7 sharing on camera had some modesty, but there was a plan to get rid of it eventually.
Anyway, it's not an excellently written book, but the ideas presented are compelling, and it does really get you thinking about how lots of people today compulsively "share" and "reveal" themselves online--with facebook posts and pictures, "checking in" from every place they visit, writing online journals, doing stuff in front of webcams, etc.
So I guess to answer the OP's question:
No, my actions/behavior would not necessarily change if I were on camera 24/7, but I would certainly not be comfortable, and I'd probably try and try to get myself as much time as possible in privacy, even if that meant committing a crime by damaging the cameras. My need for privacy is not about hiding bad or shameful behavior, but about keeping myself, at least in part, separate. I suppose some people who do lots of dishonest things might have to change their behavior if they were being recorded, but lots of dishonest people might also choose to not change their behavior.
I also have modesty about nudity, bathroom things, etc, even the wedgie-picking mentioned earlier. The modesty about things isn't about crippling shame that's holding me back from life, but about a sense of what's appropriate to be seen and what's not.
That's a good question. I think it would depend on if I knew everyone else was being watched too and to what degree. I don't care what people think about me but I don't like being in the spotlight (why I never followed my childhood dream of becoming an actress).
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