Flip Video - the revolution will be in high-definition

So I bought the Flip.

If you haven’t heard of the Flip, check it out - it’s a very simple, high definition video camera about the size of a cell phone. The best part, and why I thinks it’s a game-changer, is that you can buy one for about $200, making the Flip the cheapest, high quality video camera on the market.

But this isn’t a product review for the Flip. Instead I want to share my thoughts on what I think the Flip means to the internet and our day-to-day lives.

According to Flip-makers, Pure Digital Technologies, their product currently accounts for over 13% of all U.S. camcorder sales. That’s over 1 million of these tiny cameras being carried around in people’s back pockets in the US alone (they’ve recently been launched in the UK and Canada). And that, in turn, means a lot more opportunities for people to capture all that is weird, funny and disturbing in this world - in other words, a lot more video of what we (sadly) consider news. This is very cool and for the internet I think it means a heck of a lot more interesting video being uploaded everyday.

So what does this accelerated proliferation in video uploads mean to the way we live?

To illustrate my point, consider the multitude of police beating videos online or the famous video footage of the man tasered by police at an airport who later died. How many more instances of such things will be caught on tape now that people can carry the Flip with them wherever they go, 24/7?

Now, I know there have been camera phones on the market for a while now, but these usually offer a grainy somewhat unitelligable scene that no matter how newsworthy or disturbing is rarely compelling (remember the Sadam Hussein hanging footage?). The Flip brings it all to the viewer in a very steady, high defintion image.

So I see one of the huge upsides of the Flip is that it puts even more power in the hands of the citizenry to document and report out to the world, in a very compelling way, the injustices that occur everyday.  It’s like “Big Brother” in reverse, we can now watch-the-watchers even easier now.

Random thought: what would happen if we sent 10,000 Flip cameras to citizens caught in the middle of a war? Would this allow us to bear witness to atrocities that to this point we only hear about through the ’sanitized’ reporting of embedded media?

Is there a downside to so much power in the hands of the citizenry?

So far the proliferation of citizen journalism in the form of blogs and video technology has been empowering - shaking the foundation of the world’s power structure. The Flip will definitely accelerate this trend. But at what point does the power shift too far the other way? I don’t know the answer to that, but I’ve always thought that all things are better when balanced, I just don’t know what the proper balance is.

Jeez, all this from a little camera I bought because I thought it would cool for the family trip we’re taking to Disneyland in a few months. All this said, I love The Flip, and you should buy the Flip and join the lo-cost, high definition information revolution.

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