As the recent uprisings in the Middle East attest, the cell phone has become a powerful new player in media creation and in politics. Anyone
with a smartphone anywhere in the world can bear witness to atrocities occurring right before them and have that evidence on the Web in seconds. The power of this is not to be underestimated.
According to many historians, U.S. involvement in Vietnam during the 1960s sparked such public division in part because the war was being televised to a degree and at a level of explicitness never
seen before. What happens to our politics, our international relations when just about anyone on the street can become that reporter who brings the drama and human dimension behind world events into
everyone's homes?
According to live streaming aggregator Bambuser, the "Arab Spring" rebellion in Tahrir Square, Egypt set a record for the number of live Internet video streams from an event
in a single day - 10,000. I am not sure who does the counting of this, or even if it remotely accurate. But we do know that the protesters in Egypt were using their cameras to keep the world apprised
of what was going on as a repressive regime seemed hellbent on retaining power. It demonstrates that it is now technically possible for thousands of live cams to be turned onto an event just about
anywhere in the world.
Bambuser is hoping to bring the live video streaming surge to a more positive event in encouraging attendees of this weekend's annual Stockholm "Pride" festival to
break the old record. Hundreds of thousands attend the celebration, the company says. The company provides applications and tools for converting over 260 current generation cell phones and Web cams
into live streamers. The technology also lets you stream directly to you Facebook wall.
Going to the Bambuser broadcasts page is a peek into a user-generated video future that blends
YouTube-like randomness with live views. Unlike the usual collection of fixed traffic and location "cams" we have accessed online for years now, these feeds have the deliberate, engaging element of
the human gaze. As I write this I am looking at what looks like a political rally in India, a La Crosse game in Sweden and what looks like feeds from Kuwait TV. It is cacophonous and poorly structured
for now, but the potential here is obvious. Having live, user-directed views on events is a compelling next step in the mobilization of the Internet. It underscores the ways in which the device-driven
stage of digital expansion is not just an extension of the Web as we have known it, but a genuine transformation of its capabilities and unanticipated powers.