Webcams and community
Salon's story World wide webcam details the vision of Garland Simon, CEO of Cammunity.com, a web cam portal of sorts. She wants everything, everywhere to be on a web cam, all the time.
I have mixed feelings about web cams. They are a nice bonus when they show something I'm already interested in, like perhaps the workings of a gang of my favorite bloggers. An other web cam that sparks my interest is the ones that offer a kind of real-life soap opera. I haven't ever followed the lives of web cam celebrities, but I'm sure I'd be addicted in a second. I feel like I've missed out on the whole JenniCam scandal.
Still, most web cams just seem awful boring.
Home-made web cam enhanced serials, however, seem very promising. Any web cam feed with a storyline is infinitely more interesting than a plain old blurry and slow picture of an empty room. Multiple medias obviously add depth. Not only can you read my journal, you can also watch me writing it!
Taneli and I have been bouncing around ideas on how communities are made up, how people are entertained and what keeps them coming back to a caf� or club. We've been thinking how could we connect the Internet to a caf� in a meaningful way, so that it would extend a caf�'s current role of a place of leisure and human interaction. We want to enhance interaction and foster a community. Web cams and open mic audio feeds are obvious tools (and "content" channels) that we've talked about, so it's exciting to see other people's ideas on what web cams can do and where they are going.
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