A Life on Video online 24/7

This is a cross post from my other blog, Fusion View

In Big Brother and other reality TV shows, participants and put in a house or on a desert island by TV companies and made to do weird and wonderful things for the entertainment of a global audience. We’ve had the fictionalised movie versions of the extension of this idea in The Truman Show and Ed TV where someone’s life is played out in front of cameras all day and all night. We can now watch someone’s life unfold in the real world in real time for real.

Justin Kan started wearing a mobile webcam on his head two weeks ago and it streams everything he sees, hears and does. It’s becoming a huge cult streaming video thing that people are tuning into on the web. You can find out more at http://www.justin.tv/ or watch it below:

There’s some background info and tech industry commentary about Justin and also live mobile streaming at Techcrunch.com.

It’s not a terribly exciting footage and the streaming can be a bit slow at times. Still, 126 people logged on at one point to watch Justin sleep, according to Techcrunch. We are probably seeing the early days of the next level in blogging. At the moment, the technology allows us to post written posts very easily so everyone’s doing that. Podcasting is the next level up in terms of portability (you can download the MP3 and take it with you wherever you’re off to) and also in terms of getting that one step closer to real reality - hearing the content creator’s voice. Video blogging is the next natural step to getting as close as you can to the author. Soon anyone will be able to author or narrate their lives and live in their own movie. And everyone can be permanently watching everyone else’s lives.

Will those people with the cameras on their heads feel compelled to make their lives more interesting to their viewers, to increase their ratings?

If they act up or hype up what they are doing or feeling or living at that moment, will that be their real lives or will they just be pretending for the camera?

Will they create dramas, start arguments, cause accidents / fights/ havoc just to get the viewers in? Will their lives be an action movie, a noir, an indie movie, a French arthouse flick?

Will their lives be more real merely for being more watchable? If so, for whom - them? Their viewers?

And what of those who don’t video their lives? Will they exist at all?