One day you won't need to carry a camera in your pocket. One day you'll be able to take pictures of everything, all the time, everywhere you go. One day scientists will be able to shrink a cheap digi-camera small enough to be something you can wear, permanently and nigh invisibly. Maybe it'll be part of your clothes, like a lapel badge or something. Or something that hangs out of your ear like a bluetooth headset or an earring. Or part of a pair of glasses. It'll be spyware as spywear. It'll be inexpensive, and affordable, and acceptable. And it'll see everything you see, and record it all. Sounds great, eh?
One day you'll be able to record your entire life on video. The price of memory will come down so low that it'll be feasible to keep a realtime lifelong videostream in electronic storage, to refer back to whenever you like. Aww look, there's the first time you met your beloved, and your cousin's wedding, and your eldest child leaving for their first day at school, all captured for posterity. And that beautiful sunset you saw last week, and that cute look your kitten gave you this morning, and that gorgeous blue-eyed commuter you saw on the train. One day you need never forget anything you see.
Imagine the convenience of being able to rewind to any point in your life and remind yourself what you were doing. Bored looking out of the window on the bus? One day you'll be able to enjoy replaying last year's holiday video instead. What was that website password you've suddenly forgotten? One day you'll be able to go back and watch yourself typing it in. Whose fault was that car accident you were involved in? One day you'll be able to prove it wasn't you. Hell, why blog? One day you'll be able to simulcast your life via wi-fi and YouTube or something, and it'll be far more interesting.
One day you'll be a walking copyright nightmare. Cinemas aren't going to take kindly to patrons recording every last reel of the latest blockbuster to watch again and again. One day your arguments will be absolutely water-tight. "Yes you did say that actually, and I can prove it by replaying this mini video-clip." One day you'll be the star in your own porn movies. Assuming that anyone ever wants to risk having sex with you ever again, that is, for fear of ending up filmed and recorded on a permanent hard drive.
One day it'll be impossible to forget anything. That impromptu sexist remark you made at work will get you the sack, because everybody else will have recorded it. If you witness a crime, the police will summon you to court to send the guilty bastard down. When you search back through your memories, Google will add relevant adverts in a floating sidebar. Losing the memory stick containing your LifeMovieTM will mean you really have lost your identity.
One day the government will demand that everybody films their own lives and records the results on a biometric chip. The system will be introduced for "security reasons", and subject to a compulsory annual subscription charge. Some secret police department will have the job of downloading the nation's optical experiences and reviewing them for security transgressions. If you've not done anything wrong, you'll have nothing to fear, honest. One day Big Brother will be watching what you see, and seeing what you watch.
