Rob Spence is a Canadian filmmaker/reporter whose work has appeared on CBC, Vision, and Space TV.
Speaking at a conference in Brussels yesterday, he said that he lost an eye when young, and has long thought about using camera technology to replace it.
The BBC has run a resulting rather cutesy piece about the "bionic reporter." Surely there are likely to be advantages to an implant. It won't simply replicate the work that the second natural eye would have done for him -- restoring the parallax that he has presumably learned to live without. It will record and transmit its images.
Indeed, this is what raises ethical concerns. The "internal camera" will allow him to get into places where anybody holding an "external camera" would have been stopped at the door. But heck, nowadays if you want to be tricky in such situations you can slip a cell phone into your pocket and walk through one of those doors.
Will the camera-eye end up being so advantageous that perfectly healthy reporters with two good eyes will want one of them removed and a techno-substitute installed?
We'll know that world when we see it.
In the meantime, here's the BBC story.
And here is the homepage of the DNA 2009 conference ("Digital News Affairs") at which Spence made this revelation about his plans.
Showing posts with label new media. Show all posts
Showing posts with label new media. Show all posts
06 March 2009
20 June 2008
Drudge Retort
The Associated Press has called off the dogs, um, the lawyers in its brief confrontation with the Drudge Retort. This is being billed in some places as a clash of "old media" versus new. Maybe.
The Drudge "Retort," by the way, isn't a typo. This aint' the same as this.
The Retort began with the intention of parodying the already infamous Drudge Report, but over time has evolved into a left-leaning social networking site. The proprietor regularly posts short excerpts from wire services stories in order to get conversations among the subscribers underway.
The AP objected to this uncompensated use of its material, and the founder of the Retort, Rogers Cadenhead, lawyered up. His lawyers said lawyerlike things about how the snippets from AP stories that Cadenhead employed were "fair use," how they not only didn't deprive the AP of readers but actually helped it acquire readers, etc.
The AP has retreated, and declared that the matter is closed. And the blogosphere celebrates.
I'm not sure there's anything to celebrate here. All that is clear to me is that nobody has yet figured out the economics of the internet, nor the economics of the news business in the world the internet is refiguring so dramatically. What can you charge for and what can you not?
It is (and the King of Siam will presumably hire a lawyer if he reads this) a puzzlement.
Etcetera etcetera.
The Drudge "Retort," by the way, isn't a typo. This aint' the same as this.
The Retort began with the intention of parodying the already infamous Drudge Report, but over time has evolved into a left-leaning social networking site. The proprietor regularly posts short excerpts from wire services stories in order to get conversations among the subscribers underway.
The AP objected to this uncompensated use of its material, and the founder of the Retort, Rogers Cadenhead, lawyered up. His lawyers said lawyerlike things about how the snippets from AP stories that Cadenhead employed were "fair use," how they not only didn't deprive the AP of readers but actually helped it acquire readers, etc.
The AP has retreated, and declared that the matter is closed. And the blogosphere celebrates.
I'm not sure there's anything to celebrate here. All that is clear to me is that nobody has yet figured out the economics of the internet, nor the economics of the news business in the world the internet is refiguring so dramatically. What can you charge for and what can you not?
It is (and the King of Siam will presumably hire a lawyer if he reads this) a puzzlement.
Etcetera etcetera.
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