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15 February 2013updated 22 Oct 2020 3:55pm

Camera + minicopter = your very own Truman show

The week's most unusual business idea.

By Sophie Barnes

We live in a confused world. While we fret over privacy concerns – Google collecting our personal data, ID cards that can track our every move – we also merrily share the most mundane of details of our lives with an extended network of “friends” – it’s perfectly possible for us to sign a petition against the sharing of our personal data while broadcasting our location, emotional state and shopping habits without a moment’s thought for the blatant disconnect that’s going on here.

Regardless of the walking contradiction our lives have become, new business ideas keep popping up that make the most of our predilection for over-sharing. So the introduction of the MeCam was only a matter of time – a mini helicopter that flies around you filming your every move, the results of which can then be shared with social networks. If you thought that your friend’s endless stream of instagrammed dinner plates was worthy of a shot in the head then you’d do well to remove yourself from society if this latest idea is an indicator of things to come.

Of course, there are situations where this little gadget could be useful, say you stumble across a mugger down a dark alley then you’ve got a neat little prosecution case in the subsequent footage. Equally, court cases that have fallen apart because of a lack of evidence or witnesses at the crime scene could benefit from an inconspicuous little hover cam capturing every second.

But so far the inventors are guiding their robotic gnat down a social avenue. This means that every second of your daily life can be shared – we can all become the subject of our very own Truman Show, but without the creative direction, interesting characters or narrative arc. It does beg the question, with all this watching who’s doing the living? But who cares when you can replay your friend falling face first into a puddle of mud endlessly on repeat.

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