Actor George Clooney has a problem. Technology.
It seems he can't do anything without someone with a camera phone taking his picture. According to Maira Oliveira, a reporter with All Headline News, Clooney is paranoid that the "new technology, such as camera-phones, could jeopardize his career because he can no longer hide from prying lenses ...."
Welcome to the 21st century George --ready or not.
When people become the center of attention because they are known to live large, and Clooney has been known to live large, digital technology, especially camera phones, make the media spotlight of titillation and sensation that much bigger. In fact, camera phones make private moments pretty much non-existent for public figures like Clooney. Knowing that some stranger is always poised to capture the most embarrassing moments appears to be one of those undesirable side effects of a pervasive visually-driven, consumption-driven culture.
Americans not only consume the largest percentage of our planet's natural resources, but we are also a culture of denial. Consuming things with our eyes to feed the imagination seems little different than our need to fill our stomachs.
Camera phones can now be considered just another extension of our need to feed our insatiable appetite for diversion and entertainment. We are no longer satisfied with just seeing, we must also literally act upon the things we see. We have become obsessed with the need to possess our experiences in the world, even if it means sometimes violating a person's right to privacy.
Already we are witnessing the tensions that will test constitutionally guaranteed rights articulated in the First and Third Amendments of the U.S. Constitution.
In the age of the blogosphere, the citizen shutterbug who catches George Clooney or some other celeb in a comprising position may do so by invoking the rights of a free press and the people's right to know. Whether or not they are trained journalists is becoming increasingly irrelevant. This was made clear to us recently when Reuters and Yahoo sent out notices inviting the public to send in their pictures for publication.
With camera phones and other personal media devices we become both the source and the user of our experiences. The popularity of social networking Internet sites such as You Tube, Flickr, MySpace, and Facebook proved this point well.
Folks like Clooney are hard pressed to escape the addictive nature of an all-consuming desire to possess a likeness or experience that helps people escape reality. Camera phones make us the seer and the seen -- all day, every day.
It is instinctual to possess a moment, to fix time, and to impose ourselves on others by taking pictures, with or without their permission.
Celebrities pay a high price of fame and fortune. Now with the immediacy of digital technologies, people, famous or not, can no longer assume that anything they do in public will not land on someone website, blog, or even in the mainstream media.
Does this mean I have a right to shove a camera phone in someone's face just because they are famous? Beyond an individual's right to privacy, isn't there a sense of exploitation going on here that speaks directly to a deeply embedded pathology of obsession and fantasy?
Can technology change human behavior? You bet. Clooney observes:
"It's not that actors have all gone crazy, it's that there are just so many different sources now. You know, everybody's got a camera on their phone now so, all the time, any mistake that anybody makes, you're going to have it on film. And boy, there have already been some dumb mistakes."
Here's the catch of our camera phone culture -- don't ever make a mistake, ever -- Someone may be watching.