The Inverted Panopticon

I think this is pretty cool:

It’s a camera… or more accurately, a bunch of synchronised cameras, that someone has put together for around $300… and they take 360 degree photos in 8 second bursts… a bit like google street-view… but you can wear it as a hat!

Although you would look like a bit of a twazzock if you did. Still… I really like the idea of fully immersive video… particularly for tourism… instead of actually going to the National Gallery in London, you hire a robot that you control over the web… and with the right kind of headset, it feels a bit like actually being there.

I keep getting this vision of The Internet… The Universal Mind, having so many cameras and sensors going at once, that they cover the entire world (well, big cities at least) in this kind of lucid soup of perception. There are so many cameras at London railway stations right now that it’s practically already there… but anyway, there’s this soup of perception, that with the right software stitching together all the input from the different cameras, you can move through… and see pretty much whatever you’d see if you were walking (or flying) through the place yourself.