Adrien’s blog
Stuff I like, stuff I do, stuff I make

Tim O’Reilly, during his talk for TED:

He gives a metaphoric example of people wearing name tags in the real world and semantic description of these people on the semantic web, assuming that they are identified by an RFID tag.

we don’t wear name tags all the time [to get identified]
[…]
if we meet again, i will not recognize you because you’re wearing a name tag, i will recognize you because “oh yeah, i’ve seen you before!”
[…]
=> our machines are becoming like that

He uses this metaphor to show that the actual “Semantic Web” is filled progressively by learning from the “wisdom of crowds”:

Semantic web /RFID is things wearing name tags, and web 2.0 is learning to recognize them. So many things are continuously getting better at recognizing things by accumulating context, bit by bit.

Adding cameras to our mobile phones made people want to capture every moments, mostly for sharing it with friends (e.g. with MMS and/or Social Networking Sites).

What if we could capture these moments with public cameras that are spread all around our cities?

I could buy a picture of me driving on the highway, thanks to speed cameras, without exceeding speed limits (and pay expensive fines).
I could watch and share the video of myself falling on the pavement, as I did this morning, thanks to CCTV.
I could make a low-cost (and low-burden) music video (like did The Get Out Clause band), thanks to underground and other urban cameras.
…

Your ideas could make cameras more “social” as you could use them for fun (and thus more sympathetic), and it could also generate some revenue.