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Whole world watchesOctober 8, 1999 BY BECKY BEAUPRE STAFF REPORTER When Bethany Swain is in her Evanston office, she's never truly alone. She's being watched. People she's never met are reading the notes on her desk, or looking at the magazine cover taped to her wall. Her mom, who lives in Indianapolis, is checking just to make sure she's there. Most of the time, Swain, 27, goes about her business, largely oblivious to the Webcams pivoting and humming in the distance. The powerful cameras, which can be controlled by virtually any Internet user who visits the office's site, snap off about 1,500 live images of Swain and her co-workers every day, sending them to curious spectators all over the globe. "It's like living in a fishbowl," Swain says, laughing. This is the world of Webcams, where the action in someone else's life is only a mouse click away. Thousands of these Webcam sites have emerged in recent years. Offerings range from boring (the inside of somebody's closet) to cute (someone's pet guinea pigs) to bizarre (Spam rotting on a plate).
In September, the Adler Planetarium introduced its "Sky Eye," a panoramic rooftop camera that transmits live images online of the Chicago skyline. It's one of many such sites that offer a sort of virtual passport that can take Internet users from Darling Harbour in Sydney, Australia, to the Western Wall in Jerusalem. But it's the Webcams that feature people that have helped spawn one of the Internet's most intriguing creations: a voyeuristic subculture that thrives on the illusion of human interaction. "We have groupies who hang on that camera all day," says Paul Cooper, chief executive officer of Perceptual Robotics Inc., where Swain works. "They feel like they know us." Perceptual Robotics is a leader in Webcam software, so the company's willingness to operate in front of the cameras is a powerful marketing tool. Potential customers can watch Swain, a sales manager, while they talk to her on the phone and zoom in on the stuff on her desk. The site is also popular with employees' families--especially their moms. "We get all sorts of e-mails from parents and family members saying, `Why are you wearing that? You look like you just rolled out of bed,' " says Kevin Convery, 37, PRI's vice president for sales. "We have lots of moms making fashion comments." But Webcam groupies also account for many of the company's regular visitors--a phenomenon that those outside the Webcam world often find baffling. After all, many of the fans have no connection to Cooper's staff beyond the ones that they have created through repeated visits to the site. "There's a certain routine that people feel kind of comfortable being in," Convery says. "We've had e-mails from people saying, `Where did so-and-so's desk go?' They're almost freaking out." Last year, when Convery grew a goatee, he received e-mails almost every day from strangers. They were tracking the growth of his facial hair. Swain has received numerous e-mails from a guy in Turkey who says he collects pictures of her in his "Bethany file." "I don't feel threatened," Swain says, "because he's in Turkey." A few Webcam sites are even useful. A Chicagoan can keep tabs on the crowds at the corner of Waveland and Sheffield before a Cubs game. A New Yorker can check out traffic on the Brooklyn Bridge during rush hour. The Wrigleyville Cam has been perched atop Murphy's Bleachers, the popular bar, since last May and is part of a local arts-entertainment-shopping Web site called Sidewalk Chicago. "It is just a novelty to see people partying and having a good time before a Cubs game," says Shawn Moran, marketing manager for Sidewalk Chicago. People "just check out the scene to see how crazy it is." Less obvious is what draws people to some of the amateur sites. Or what compels people to broadcast their lives to the seemingly endless, and mostly anonymous, Internet public. Dane Kantner, a DePaul University freshman who transmits round-the-clock images of his dorm room, seems baffled by the question. "I don't know," he says. "Why not?" His site usually features one of two scenes: Kantner working at his computer, or Kantner's empty chair. For this, he says, between 2,000 and 3,500 people visit his main Web page every week--and a handful e-mail him every day. The pace of the action on Kantner's site mirrors that at many amateur sites. Dorm rooms, in fact, are common Webcam fare. So are live images of people's pets. Peeking in on the reliable monotony of other peoples' lives seems to fill a void for some people, Webcam professionals say. "Lots of them seem lonely," Swain says of her fans. Others are just curious--or intrigued by the technology that allows them to control where the camera points or what it zooms in on. "Most of them are completely inquisitive," she says, noting that she usually doesn't have time to respond to all her e-mail. "People will ask me about the stuff on my desk. . . . Some of them [e-mail me] as one-way diary. It's less about them and more about talking about me and my stuff." Those in the business predict that serious interest in Webcams will keep growing as more people use the sites to check road conditions, to see how crowded the local mall is, to take their kids on virtual field trips. "We're seeing a lot of interest from folks who want to educate," Convery says of their clients. Others, he adds, "just want to make the world a smaller place." |
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