Cool or Creepy? A Clip-On Camera Can Capture Every Moment

[00:00:00] Speaker A: And now to All Tech Considered. Today, wearable cameras and their implications. Already few life events pass us by without someone getting out a camera phone, and it's hard to go anywhere without being spotted by a security camera. Well, now combine that kind of surreptitious, all-seeing eye with an every moment is a Kodak moment attitude, and you get wearables like Google Glass or

[00:00:25] Speaker A: the camera that NPR's Elise Hu has been trying out. It's called Narrative. It clips on and snaps still shots.

[00:00:33] Speaker B: When the Narrative Clip came in the mail— check this out— I dropped it on the desk of my photographer friend, NPR's Claire O'Neill. The message on the box promised something big.

[00:00:45] Speaker C: The dream of a photographic memory has come true. Wow.

[00:00:49] Speaker B: O'Neill has actually been fearing a device that would automatically shoot photos all day long. Now she was staring her fear in the lens.

[00:00:58] Speaker C: I already have too many photos to look at.

[00:01:00] Speaker B: The Narrative Clip is a lightweight square, a bit bigger than a postage stamp, with a tiny lens in the corner. You clip it to your lapel and it starts automatically and silently snapping a photo every 30 seconds. Later, you connect it to your computer to store the photo stream. A Narrative app then organizes what it thinks are the best shots of I don't even have to try to remember anything.

[00:01:24] Speaker C: Great. I'm just going to turn my brain off now. This is crazy.

[00:01:28] Speaker B: Or is it? Narrative's founder, a Swedish designer named Martin Källström, says his wearable camera reacts to a real need. We don't often capture simple or serendipitous moments because we don't know they're significant until later.

[00:01:43] Speaker D: What I wanted to achieve was actually to have a tool to make it possible for me to document stuff that I experience while I'm experiencing them without taking me out of that moment.

[00:01:55] Speaker B: The always-on camera means being fully present without pulling out a point-and-shoot.

[00:02:00] Speaker D: You have special moments in your life where you want to be fully in that moment, maybe spend time with your friends or your kids.

[00:02:09] Speaker B: I wore the Narrative Clip while spending time with my friends and family and coworkers. The most common reaction to seeing a white square clipped to my shirt was actually, is that a radiation detector? Since these aren't mainstream, I had to explain it was an automatically snapping clip-on camera.

[00:02:28] Speaker C: Is it a camera? That's creepy.

[00:02:30] Speaker D: Oh my God.

[00:02:31] Speaker C: What are you doing?

[00:02:32] Speaker B: Even my closest friends said they felt strange about being photographed this way. Källström, the creator, says he designed the clip so it's obvious you're wearing it. And he says just because it's shooting doesn't mean the images go We never publish stuff automatically on the web.

[00:02:49] Speaker D: It's always through the app. It's always a manual human decision behind every photo that gets published out of your stream.

[00:02:58] Speaker B: When I uploaded my stream, only a few photos were remotely interesting. Most were shots of my computer screen, people in meetings, and my hair, which accidentally covered the lens. This is why Claire O'Neill, the photographer, is less concerned about privacy and more curious about the effect on our memories.

[00:03:16] Speaker C: I think this could potentially sort of like reshape the way that you remember your life because it— these aren't the scenes that you chose to remember. They're the scenes that this thing remembered for you.

[00:03:25] Speaker B: If it all seems like too much, tech investor and Narrative backer Evan Nisselson says we're just at the beginning of the wearable camera era.

[00:03:33] Speaker D: Within 5 to 10 years, wearable cameras and camera phones will replace 99% of all digital SLRs and video cameras.

[00:03:41] Speaker B: A near future of clip-on cameras snapping away at every moment. Picture that. Elise Hu, NPR News.