This, a thousand times over. Was at the beach last week, there was a seal sunbathing on a rock 50m from shore... Around me I could hear people complaining they couldn't see it properly - because all weren't looking at it, rather at the crappy digital zoom on their phones.
I just looked at the fucking thing, these eye things work pretty well. I'd rather be present and use my meat-based memory than have a "memory" on my phone of an event I viewed through a glass, darkly.
Also, 16gb 5s here, space I have to think about quarterly, if that.
I'm going to blow your mind: you are actually allowed to do both.
Allowed, yes. Capable, not likely. Multitasking is overrated and actually counterproductive when writing to the meat-store inside your skull.
I want full recording of everything I see and hear at qualities high enough that I can go back and look at things I missed the first time. I thought Google Glass was the start of that, but it looks like it's going to be a few more years.
If the recording is completely passive, as randallsquared was saying, why not?
If you think this is good, like some sort of pressure to make the public more accountable for what they say... I would warn that instead of an ethical wonderland you may find yourself in a panopticon pressure cooker with the status quo in power.
In any case, as the tech to record becomes ever smaller and less obtrusive, there will ultimately be no way to know whether you are being recorded digitally. Therefore society and people's reactions will adjust.
I think in the end it will become quite taboo to operate a recording device with your friends all the time. Maybe it will become okay to turn it on during a jog through the city or a trip to the fair, but having your recording device turned on while enjoying a glass of wine with me on my back porch will be a no-no. Having it own while at the gym? No. Client meeting or anything work related which could contain company "secrets"? No. Maybe I'm wrong and there will be a cultural shift in which we all just submit ourselves to this sort of social survalience, but I find it hard to imagine it happening in any sphere more interesting than a family trip to the Apple Store.
There is no way that a first date and the potential trip back to my place has any room for a recording, it's just not a psychological and social fit.
Nonetheless, this is an interesting debate. Reminds me of an episode of Black Mirror. Check that out for sure, it basically illustrates what you are saying. I found the segment in which before boarding an airplane passengers were required to allow the security to review their memory quite disturbing. Extrapolate that invasion of privacy in every other direction. Having whatever cloud or personal drive you record to be potentially hackable or open for evidence in the courts... It's just some dystopian death of privacy territory that I can't ever seeing the public embracing. Then again, maybe they will and if they do I'll be moving myself to whatever state our country is willing to stand up for privacy and ban such devices.
The basis of my position is the historical record that the most important ideas and movements towards advancements in human rights have often started out as illegal, unpopular and challenges to the status quo. The idea that we can stop crime by recording everything is an illusion and will only serve to suppress advancements which defy the current rule of law.
I've seen Black Mirror, and liked it for the most part. I don't remember that particular scene, though. Maybe it's time for a rewatch. :)
Neal Stephenson, writing in 1999:
I was in Disney World recently, specifically the part of it called the Magic Kingdom, walking up Main Street USA. This is a perfect gingerbready Victorian small town that culminates in a Disney castle. It was very crowded; we shuffled rather than walked. Directly in front of me was a man with a camcorder. It was one of the new breed of camcorders where instead of peering through a viewfinder you gaze at a flat-panel color screen about the size of a playing card, which televises live coverage of whatever the camcorder is seeing. He was holding the appliance close to his face, so that it obstructed his view. Rather than go see a real small town for free, he had paid money to see a pretend one, and rather than see it with the naked eye he was watching it on television.
And rather than stay home and read a book, I was watching him.
Americans' preference for mediated experiences is obvious enough, and I'm not going to keep pounding it into the ground. I'm not even going to make snotty comments about it--after all, I was at Disney World as a paying customer.
I'd rather have a digital memory, as poor as it may be, than rely on my meat-based memory which is terrible at the best of times, and many important events I lose quickly, without a way to refresh them periodically—like a photograph. So awesome for you that your memory is great, but that's not universal.