Cameras, Cameras Everywhere!

Friday, October 16, 2009

Page 15

AT THE SIDEBAR (Column)

Cameras, Cameras Everywhere!

By J’AMY PACHECO

I recently wrote here about the dangers of sharing roads with people who drive while doing other things, such as painting their nails, eating, and talking on cellular phones.

Citing a study that highlighted significantly increased chances of crashing while driving distracted, I called for stiffer penalties for those who, among other things, break California’s law that bans talking on a hand-held cell phone while driving.

Imagine my surprise when, days later, I read about the wife of the guy who signed that law being caught chatting away on her hand-held cell phone while driving.

Oops.

As I understand it, Maria Shriver’s cell phone scofflaw-ness was documented on camera and then provided to the celebrity-watching website TMZ.com.

I don’t know who recorded the first lady’s transgressions, but viewing them made one thing clear to me—there are probably as many people wielding cameras these days as there are talking on their cell phones while driving.

There are cameras everywhere. I can, for example, sit at home and pull up views from cameras along the freeway that I have to take to get out of the desert. (When they’re working, anyway.) If I start longing for the mountain serenity of Sequoia National Park, I can pull up a live Web camera and watch the trees grow. Disneyland is my happy place, and if I need a dose of happy thoughts, Howard Johnson’s gives me the opportunity gaze upon Disneyland’s iconic Matterhorn via a camera mounted on top of its hotel.

Cameras mounted in intersections catch red light-runners, who get pricey tickets in the mail. Security cameras seem to monitor our every move, whether we’re buying a Diet Coke from a convenience store or withdrawing cash from an ATM.

I can’t tell you how many press releases I receive containing attachments—photos of bad guys recorded on security cameras and distributed for the world to see. (I’m not complaining, mind you; I see this as a good thing.)

It seems everybody in the world has a cell phone now, and the majority of these cell phones have cameras built in. (I think my sister and mother are the last two people on the planet to own cell phones that don’t take pictures, or text.)

One need only pull up YouTube to see the impact cameras have had on our existence. On YouTube, one can view all kinds of moving pictures, from the aftermath of a recent bookstore attack on singer Leona Lewis to practical jokes in foreign countries.

Before going to Disney World a few years ago, I used YouTube videos to check out rides that I thought might be too much for me.

I’ve come to the conclusion that if something’s been done, it’s probably been done on camera, and it’s probably available for viewing somewhere on the Internet.

There have been some very high-profile results of cameras having appeared in unexpected places—at the arrest of Rodney King, for example. If anybody ever went looking for a video that had long-lasting, far-reaching impact, that has to be at least a contender.

I sometimes feel sorry for people who have been caught on camera doing things that they probably would rather not have made public. Who will ever forget Britney Spears almost dropping her baby, or driving away with an infant on her lap instead of in a car seat?

Celebrities are definitely targets for people with cameras, whether ordinary citizens or paparazzi. I imagine it’s not a lot of fun to go around knowing that somebody is waiting with a camera for you to make a mistake—just ask Miley Cyrus.

Of course, all those cameras out there in the world would be no big deal if there wasn’t such an insatiable market for the material recorded on them.

Even people with no fame can become famous when captured on camera. This is especially true for the idiots who do something wrong, record it, and then post it on YouTube for all the world to see.

I wonder, doesn’t it ever occur to them that law enforcement officials, too, have access to YouTube?

I also wonder how many of us have been “caught” on camera doing something we’d hate to find on television or the Internet—yelling at our kids, picking our noses, or goodness knows what else.

The scary thing about that is knowing there would be an audience.