A YOUNG American man is sharing his life on the inter-webby thingy. He has strapped a camera to his head and is broadcasting his existence to the world.
He is Justin Kan, which is a suitably can-do sort of a surname for a modern 24/7 person, and his website venture is called Justin.tv. So working on the premise that there is no idea which is not worth pinching, here is my own version. It is called, after endless caffeine-fuelled meetings with my creative team, Julian.tv and here are a few random snatches...
The journey to work: Sorry if the picture is cramped but the head-cam was a tight fit under the cycling helmet. Here we are, in the shed, trying to disentangle the bike from the other bikes, and assorted gardening booby-traps laid by the resident gardener, including rakes, brooms and a strategically placed lawnmower that falls on your head at the slightest touch. Hence the helmet.
Safely extracted from the shed, down the alley we go, and out on to the road, dodging students taking their hangovers for a morning walk. Whiz through York without swearing at any crazy cars today, although a couple of pedestrians on suicide missions earn a mumbled cursing.
Bump, bump, bump - pardon the distortion, but that always happens with the cobbles on Foss Bridge. No buses this morning, so straight through. Oh, look, there's an attractive girl over there. Whoops, sorry for the wobble. Dash on to work in a manly blur of pedals and spokes. Middle-aged male cyclists with their trousers tucked into their stripy socks are surely all the rage nowadays.
At work: Here's me staring at the computer screen, trying to think of something to write. If I move my head-cam around, you can see shaky images from inside this newspaper office. It's open plan, with little sight of the outside world, and on the messy side, like all self-respecting newspaper offices. If I lean round my big screen, you will be able to see my long-term colleague Charles Hutchinson wearing one of his colourful tie, shirt and jumper combinations.
Back home again: One or other of the teenage offspring is on the computer, but not the tallest one, back from university for Easter, who has his own computer upstairs. The racket you hear is the usual Cole commotion: music from computer in one room, Radio 4 in the kitchen, the television in the front room, electric guitar jamming from the upper reaches. Glad I don't live next door to us.
In the kitchen: Make favourite rye bread. This calls on secret ingredient which lurks in the fridge and has the enticing appearance of mud scooped from the bottom of the River Ouse. Turn a deaf ear to one or other teenager asking if I am making brick bread again.
In the front room: Strange sound echoes round the inter-web thingy. Must have dropped off while watching television. Damn! Julian.tv provides final proof of previously alleged snoring.
In the car: Off across the M62 once more. How kind of them to build this motorway for me. So many family journeys lie this way. Look over there, just behind that BMW doing 130mph, there's the stubborn farm that stayed put when the motorway was built. Richard Thompson is on the in-car CD again, switched off in the back so the teens don't complain...
Night time: camera switched off, just in case my luck is in with Mrs Julian.tv. Camera switches back on later if it is a sleep-shredded night. Shaky infra-red images of nomadic shuffles around alternative sleeping locations; books read, milk drink made perhaps, pop more of the non-drug tablets that never work; eventually switch off at some ungodly hour.
THEN again, perhaps not. Is self-surveillance really the new entertainment? Have we moved from The Truman Show through Big Brother to ordinary boring lives counting as art or entertainment?
My visits to Justin.tv have included seeing Justin asleep, and going to a very noisy bar, where it was impossible to hear a word anyone said.
All very democratic and share-and-share-alike, in the modern way. But do we really want to watch strangers doing nothing much as a diversion from doing nothing much ourselves?
It's all very odd, isn't it?
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