"Grapefruit" 360-degree video camera – wonderful or terrifying?

Devin Coldewey

Devin Coldewey is a Seattle-based writer and photographer. He has written for the TechCrunch network since 2007. Some posts he’d like you to read: The Dangers of Externalizing Knowledge | Generation i | Surveillant Society | Choose Two | Frame Wars | The User’s Manifesto | Our Great Sin His personal website is coldewey.cc. → Learn More

Wednesday, September 17th, 2008


I can’t tell whether the idea of this 360-degree video camera is a good or a bad thing, but I’m surprised we haven’t seen more stuff like it. Stitching the images together from a live feed can’t be that hard if you control the hardware — this might be really nice for concerts and stuff. Or, alternately, we’re heading towards a situation where everybody will have one of these things on their head and you can just stream other people’s lives all the time through your ocular attachment. And the government is watching, of course.

It still looks a little… webcammy, but the mobile nature of the apparatus probably means its ability to crunch data is pretty limited. Also, take “mobile nature” with a grain of salt because there appears to be an entire exoskeleton supporting this little Eye of Sauron.

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