Video Camera Phones 'Altering Our Private Lives'

In an essay evaluating recent events like the furtive video of Saddam's hanging and Michael Richards' racist blowup, Slate's Michael Agger examines how cell-phone videos are changing our reality one clip at a time.

In the essay, Agger writes that cell phone videos gave rise to what English youth call "happy slapping," a "game" in which gangs of young people assault strangers and capture it on video. He also notes that while such cameras have been touted for the possiblity of anti-crime surveillance, they are perfect devices for peeping toms and other people just interested in spying. "In glorious retrospect, it seems like a terrifically bad idea to give the world a spy camera that looks and functions like a cell phone," writes Agger, who concludes with a thought about how these cameras (and the resulting online video) will affect us in years to come.

[B]efore we move on to the next racist comedian or cocaine-snorting supermodel, let's put the Saddam video in context. It is a weird echo of the Zapruder film, another piece of amateur footage that caught the death of a leader. The differences are stark, of course. Zapruder captured Kennedy while standing openly in the Dallas sunlight. The official who videoed Saddam did so furtively, pointing his camera to the ground at times. But they both testify to the power of first-person witnessing, and how a digital copy of that witnessing can upend neat narratives and certainties. We'll see the best of things, we'll see the worst of things, we'll see everything.