Camera phone pioneer considers the gadget's cultural impact

SANTA CRUZ, California (AP) -- The chilling sounds of gunfire on the Virginia Tech campus. The hateful taunts from Saddam Hussein's execution.

Those videos, shot with cell phone cameras and seen by millions, are just a couple of recent examples of the power now at the fingertips of the masses. Even the man widely credited with inventing the camera phone in 1997 is awed by the cultural revolution he helped launch.

''It's had a massive impact because it's just so convenient,'' said Philippe Kahn, a tech industry maverick whose other pioneering efforts include the founding of software maker Borland, an early Microsoft Corp. antagonist.

''There's always a way to capture memories and share it,'' he said. ''You go to a restaurant, and there's a birthday and suddenly everyone is getting their camera phones out. It's amazing.''

If Kahn feels a bit like a proud father when he sees people holding up their cell phones to snap pictures, there is good reason: He jury-rigged the first camera phone while his wife was in labor with their daughter.

''We were going to have a baby and I wanted to share the pictures with family and friends,'' Kahn said, ''and there was no easy way to do it.''

So as he sat in a maternity ward, he wrote a crude program on his laptop and sent an assistant to a RadioShack store to get a soldering iron, capacitors and other supplies to wire his digital camera to his cell phone. When Sophie was born, he sent her photo over a cellular connection to acquaintances around the globe.

A decade later, 41 percent of American households own a camera phone ''and you can hardly find a phone without a camera anymore,'' said Michael Cai, an industry analyst at Parks Associates.

Market researcher Gartner Inc. predicts that about 589 million cell phones will be sold with cameras in 2007, increasing to more than 1 billion worldwide by 2010.

Mix in the Internet's vast reach and the growth of the YouTube generation, and the ubiquitous gadget's influence only deepens and gets more complicated. So much so that the watchful eyes on all of us may no longer just be those of Big Brother.

''For the past decade, we've been under surveillance under these big black and white cameras on buildings and at 7-Eleven stores. But the candid camera is wielded by individuals now,'' said Fred Turner, an assistant professor of communications at Stanford University who specializes in digital media and culture.

Story continues below

The contraption Kahn assembled in a Santa Cruz labor-and-delivery room in 1997 has evolved into a pocket-friendly phenomenon that has empowered both citizen journalists and personal paparazzi.

It has prompted lawsuits -- a student sued campus police at the University of California Los Angeles for alleged excessive force after officers were caught on cell-phone video using a stun gun during his arrest; and been a catalyst for change -- a government inquiry into police practices ensued in Malaysia after a cell-phone video revealed a woman detainee being forced to do squats while naked.