The gadget that changed the world

The chilling sounds of gunfire on the Virginia Tech campus. The hateful taunts from Saddam Hussein's execution.

Those videos, shot with mobile phone cameras and seen by millions, are just a couple of recent examples of the power now at the fingertips of the masses.

Even the man widely credited with inventing the camera phone in 1997 is awed by the cultural revolution he helped launch.

"It's had a massive impact because it's just so convenient," said Philippe Kahn, a tech industry maverick whose other pioneering efforts include the founding of software maker Borland, an early Microsoft competitor.

"There's always a way to capture memories and share it," he said. "You go to a restaurant, and there's a birthday and suddenly everyone is getting their camera phones out. It's amazing."

If Kahn feels a bit like a proud father when he sees people holding up their mobile phones to snap pictures, there is good reason: He jury-rigged the first camera phone while his wife was in labour with their daughter.

"We were going to have a baby and I wanted to share the pictures with family and friends," Kahn said, "and there was no easy way to do it."

So as he sat in a maternity ward, he wrote a crude program on his laptop and sent an assistant to a RadioShack store to get a soldering iron, capacitors and other supplies to wire his digital camera to his mobile phone. When Sophie was born, he sent her photo over a cellular connection to acquaintances around the globe.

A decade later, 41 per cent of American households own a camera phone "and you can hardly find a phone without a camera anymore," said Michael Cai, an industry analyst at Parks Associates.

Market researcher Gartner Inc. predicts that about 589 million mobile phones will be sold with cameras in 2007, increasing to more than 1 billion worldwide by 2010.

Mix in the internet's vast reach and the growth of the YouTube generation, and the ubiquitous gadget's influence only deepens and gets more complicated. So much so that the watchful eyes on all of us may no longer just be those of Big Brother.

"For the past decade, we've been under surveillance under these big black and white cameras on buildings and at 7-Eleven stores. But the candid camera is wielded by individuals now," said Fred Turner, an assistant professor of communications at Stanford University who specialises in digital media and culture.

The contraption Kahn assembled in a Santa Cruz labour-and-delivery room in 1997 has evolved into a pocket-friendly phenomenon that has empowered both citizen journalists and personal paparazzi.
Source :http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au