As always, standards are driven by the mass-market and the mass market is already speaking on this one. In 18 months time there will be no difference between mobile phones & cheap digital cameras - all but the cheapest phones will come with built-in cameras. Its almost certain that these devices will have GPS location, and probable that they will have Bluetooth as well. 802.11 less likely because of power consumption - possible that there will be little "base stations" to go Blt <-> WiFi so the Bluetooth becomes a wireless drop cable. Realtime video isn't on the horizon unless someone pulls a lot of bandwidth out of the bag, as ever network speeds grow more slowly than processing power. So effectively everybody will be walking around with the ability to take timestamped photos and transmit them. BrinWorld arrives, at least in public places. No policeman gets to bludgeon a demonstrator unrecorded ever again - expect them to wear visors and helmets increasingly often, and to remove the identifying marks from uniforms (as, or course, riot cops and vigilantes have been doing for decades) The authorities will be able to take down the cell networks - though they won't be able to do that without causing some publicity. They won't be able to confiscate all phones from everyone who is walking the street. Presumably in high-security situation (like interviews with presidents or rides on torture planes) phones can be removed from visitors but they will be rare. Mobile phones are now so ubiquitous that taking them away has come to seem as odd as asking visitors to remove their shoes or to wear face masks. Ken Brown Tyler Durden wrote:
Well, the rason d'etre of 'eJazeera' as I see it is primarily for publically-taken photos and videos to be quickly "gypsied" away from their port of origination (ie, the camera that took them), so that they can eventually make it into a public place on ye old 'Net. The enabling technology as I see it here is802.11b, Wi-Fi. A typical scenario is the case of public demonstrations where the local "authorities" are called in, and where they get, shall we say, a little overzealous. In many such cases (here, New York City, Here, USA, and there--China, etc...), such authorities will attempt to confiscate devices that could have captured the events or captured the perpetrators (and their badge numbers, if applicable) in photo or video.
The ultimate aim of eJazeera is to make even the thought of "capturing" such video non-existent, due to the commonplace practices outlined in an eJazeera-type document (or eventually tribal knowledge). Short of that, it is of course in itself desirable for such events to get onto the public 'Net.