Living Life Under Constant Camera Surveillance Could Pay With Stardom

Are you ready for your close up?

You better be.

Life has become one big screen test.

Cameras are everywhere: in the stores, in the office, in the home, and coming soon to a traffic light near you.

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Think you can run a red anymore and get away with it?

Think you can goof off on the job unnoticed?

Think you can sneak out to the curb in your fuzzy slippers and ratty robe and drop something in the garbage without anyone seeing you?

Think again.

And it's not just stationary cameras. Everyone with a cell phone is a potential writer-director-videographer now. Cameras have become so ubiquitous that people employ cameras to protect themselves from others using cameras.

Take The Police:

"Every breath you take

"Every move you make

"Every bond you break

"Every step you take

"I'll be watching you."

No, not those Police, the actual police.

Many police departments, including some in Connecticut, are now equipping their officers with tiny video cameras, which are worn on their person and used to record interactions with the public. Meanwhile, the public are using their cell phones to record interactions with the police.

Have differing accounts of what happened at that traffic stop? Let's go to the video tape. Better still, lets check the slow motion, the instant replays, the stop action. There is Reece Witherspoon getting out of the car. See her sway. See her say, "You are about to find out who I am."

Where is all this headed?

Reality television, of course. The raw footage of our lives will be very entertaining. No embarrassing moment will go unseen, or unpunished, or unwatched by millions.

Cameras will make us all celebrities and at the same time members of the paparazzi? It could get very confusing. Will we chase ourselves down the street trying to get our own photo? Will we stalk ourselves, stakeout ourselves, get into fights with ourselves, sue ourselves, ram our own cars?

We have truly entered the era of Big Brother, from which there is no turning back. The most you can hope for, I'm afraid, is that when someone is directing a camera at you they get your good side.

