The age of over-exposure

If not the age of surveillance, certainly the age of over-exposure is dawning. And USATODAY writer Janet Kornblum highlights the fact that kid photogs and videographers are major contributors to this ongoing reality show that is American life – “featuring themselves — and anyone else they see along the way,” unthinkingly without permission, of course. Right now, all these images stored in “government databases (taken from places such as traffic cameras and satellite images) … [and] on the computers of our friends, our neighbors and family and in the databanks of Internet companies that host photo sites … are relatively benign because technology doesn't yet allow us to search through images,” according to USATODAY. But of course that’s changing, and we and especially our kids are going to have to get a lot smarter about the taking and sharing of images. And watch out, the headline of a New York Times story this week is “Video Catching Up to Photos When It Comes to Sharing." It explains the basics of video-sharing by email and home and Web “broadcasting” via services such as PIXPO.com, HomeMovie.com, Snapfish.com, YouTube.com and Metacafe.com.