Title: Camera phones are fantastic/negative items to have in society. Discuss
Camera phones were born ten years ago. It has been influencing people in the world not only in positive ways but also in negative ways. We will have an insight into its adverse effect, including “Invasion into people’s privacy”, “Illegal pictures and dishonouring footages”, “Paranoia and Hostility” and “Ignorance of other people”.
The first problem is “invasion into people’s privacy”. Nowadays privacy has been a disappearing luxury that we can no longer afford, thanks to technology that is in every pocket. Whether you’re a celebrity or a nobody, you still are affected by its influence. While you’re fretting about the government looking at your video-mail, your stalking neighbour has already uploaded it to the Internet. After a few second, the picture will go around the world and appear from nowhere on the display of a Nokia in Finland.
The days when something happens in front of a crowd and it’s not captured are over. Now, we have to assume that everything we do in public is potentially going to be recorded. In the old days, kids would go to a summer break, get drunk, and take off their clothes, … and no one would know and soon it disappear into oblivion. However, nowadays, those kinds of pictures flicker 24/7 on the internet, which means anyone can see them, including college admissions officers, potential employers or voters… not to mention your little adept brother.
Camera phones don’t merely affect only a single individual but also a big organization. With a camera phone, a peeping Tom can snap revealing pictures in the gym’s changing room. Cheating students can peek at a test’s answers. Crooked employees can copy confidential plans. Identity thieves can capture credit card numbers. These problems worry a lot of organizations, where privacy and secrecy are unequivocally important.
Many suggestions have been made, but for no good. Organizations have tried to ban camera phones in their premises. However, the phones are too small, too easy to hide inside pockets or wallets… and hardly can be seen from far. Also, it doesn’t make any recognizable signs when taking pictures. The culprit just has to pretend that he is typing a text message for someone while taking pictures that could be a fortune.
“Essentially, your camera, your computer and your Internet connection is all in one device”, said Alan Reiter, president of wireless Internet & mobile computing, “That’s what makes it powerful – and also makes it scary.”
The camera, therefore, has been an exceptionally excellent device for espionage. Compact, convenient, easy to be hidden and disguised. Nothing could be better for a spy, unless technologists will make a more powerful one, which is out of questions.
Therefore, the problem goes on with paranoia and hostility. The potential menace to celebrities, whose privacies are already compromised, should be obvious. It must be frustrating, knowing not only they have to worry about the stubborn paparazzi with the telephoto lens but the guy on the next barstool with the latest Nokia.
Not long ago, probably six or seven years, when you saw, lets say, Brangelina’s family walking in a park, the thing that came to your mind first is to ask for a picture. Now it’s obsolete, the new way is to snap a series of pictures and then give them to your friends and upload it to the Internet. Now you ask why celebrities are so reclusive.
What would you think if someone, with his/her camera phone, stalked around and kept a full electronic diary of what you had done in a day? That diary would probably be sent to the Internet, where people from everywhere can access. Sometimes, funnily enough, people know more about your life than you do.
Disturbing pictures and stories about celebrities developed fast. Perverts and Jackasses began to carry on more perverse plans. For example, we see, “happy slapping” and “street kissing” revolted on YouTube not long ago. Probably, in close future, more perverse plans will go on (like “pulling skirts”…). Paranoia should be considered.
Hostility would eventually end in. Stories about people beating each other because the other took their pictures happen all the time. Sometimes, people get angry only because seeing the camera phones on other’s hands, for they’ve experienced the humiliation of being taken pictures.
Worse yet, these kinds of things interest many people. There are many sites actually pay the amateur paparazzi for the pictures that they think worthwhile. And those amateurs could be anyone. They could be strangers in the subway, sneaky students in class, bored guys in the audience or vengeful ex-lover.
Ignorance is also a trigger of everything. We who have once listened to a debating competition is well known with the statement: “everything has its best and its worst”. Every supportive side has used that truth to yank us from the dream of perfection, that we cannot expect a thing without flaws; therefore, we should just accept (or ignore) it.
Look back at the matter in hand; the camera phones can do many terrible things, but again those things may not affect your life. Then you don’t care anymore, and the technology keeps developing this way. And more contraptions will be born. For example, in the next several years, a new device will yield us the power to come to anywhere in a blink. Then you will find yourself worrying that your house would be searched without your knowledge or a pervert would appear from nowhere in your bathroom. Sometimes ignorance is bliss, but the more you ignore, the worse the problem will get.
“With this kind of device, we’ll see the best of thing, we’ll see the worst of thing”, Phillipe Kahn, the honoured father of the camera phone said. A camera phone can be wonderful for many people. But abuses of them should be put into consideration. Banishment isn’t possible, so the question is “How do we minimalize its negative affect?”
Bibliography
- Hello to less privacy, Maria Puente, USA Today (Feb 28, 2007)
- Are camera phones too revealing? Locker room snooping, school cheating prompt bans, high-tech protection plans, San Francisco Chronicle (May 16, 2004)
- Camera phones in gym raise concerns, Orange County Register (Santa Ana, CA) (Nov 6, 2003)
- These readers don’t like cell phones in gyms, Orange County Register (Santa Ana, CA) (Nov 5, 2003)
- All these papers are gathered in Opposing Viewpoints Resource Centre, www.galegroup.com .
