Just as cellphone cameras have made the availability of pictures from any event available (no matter how obscure, unplanned, or accidental), now cellphone video cameras have done the same for video. David Brin wrote of the Transparent Society and I believe that his vision is coming to be. In his book, he envisioned that all parts of public life would be recorded and used to enhance public safety (as well as to allow us to do things like check on our children, preview traffic conditions, etc.). While he didn’t necessarily include the idea of mobile phones and the Internet as part of this, what is happening today is eerily close to what he foresaw.  One of the overarching ideas in his book is that we are much better off in a world where the public has control over the cameras than  where the government has control.

Let’s look at this from a ministry perspective now. How can lifecasting be used to promote Jesus? How can it be used to encourage people to come to our churches or participate in our organizations? I’m not sure. If we live streamed our services and events? If we hooked up our pastors 24/7 to a camera?! I’m not sure if I want to know what anyone is doing all the time; and I sure do not want everyone to know what I am doing all the time! What do you think?

Let me explain: in The Transparent Society, David Brin argues that the march of technology will bring us to a point where every part of our public lives will be recorded. According to Brin, this will be accomplished via “tiny cameras, panning left and right, surveying traffic and pedestrians, observing everything in open view.” The book asks one basic questions: who should have access to the images captured by the cameras? Two scenarios are given: in “city #1″ the police and governing authorities have access to the images, in “city #2″, the public shares access with them. He argues that, while both would lead to a large reduction in crime, the latter would reduce the abuse of power by the authorities. When I discuss this book with my students every semester, many are doubtful that this would be the case: members of the public would abuse the use of the cameras and invade privacy. But we all agree that it is very likely that this “transparent society” will indeed come to pass, and very soon.

Written in 1999, the book did not envision armies of citizen with their own personal video cameras embedded in portable phones. Since these cameras are not public, they are owned by the individuals and the authorities may or may not get access to them. In effect then, we now live, right now, in city #2. I am prompted to write this by the latest news story out of UCLA, where video images captured by a cellphone camera will be used to document their abuse of a student there. However, it is not just this story that tells me we are in city #2: just recently the Texas Border Patrol has made their cameras accessible to the public and are seeking the public’s assistance in watching the border and reporting any illegal crossings. And here’s another story that shows how an arsonist was captured by video footage.

It may not be the transparent society specifically depicted in the book, but David Brin saw this coming seven years ago. Check out his site and specifically the pages devoted to this topic.