by Bill Sievert

Problem is, most of the sites are boringly static, with a view from a single fixed camera facing an often nondescript monument, for example Rehoboth’s bandstand. I mean, how many people do you know who come to the beach to stare fondly at a usually deserted chunk of concrete block?

In our era of high-tech achievement, we have a right to expect more than a glimpse of the local weather from resort web cams. What most of us really want to see are people. Not those tiny little specks of Boardwalk strollers shot through an unfocused lens blocked by pigeons perched among the letters of the Dolle’s sign, but life-size pictures of who is doing what and with whom. Close-ups. Motion pictures. Holograms, even. To bring the essence of beach life to those of us whose schedules deny us the opportunity to walk the Walk in person, sharp entrepreneurs should set up voyeur cams like those used for television’s “Big Brother” series and for the popular Internet sites that peer into the hot tubs of handsome young people who dwell in “College Boys Live” or “Sorority Sisters” cribs. As the late, great Allen Funt used to put it, we like “to catch people in the act of being themselves.”

It’s not that such sites need to offer embarrassing stunts the way Candid Camera did, or as The Jamie Kennedy Experiment and Spy TV do now. Just let beachgoers look foolish all by themselves. Ah, the nostalgic pleasure many viewers would get as a web shot focuses in on a 300-pound man, crammed into a size-medium bikini, as he stumbles along the Boards, waving the gulls away from his funnel cake and overflowing cup of Thrasher’s fries.

As for the issue of privacy, forget it. This is the age of Ashcroft, after all. In Florida, the city of Tampa already uses cameras to photograph every person on the streets of Ybor City, a neighborhood of trendy nightclubs and bistros. Authorities say they use the pictures only to match faces with mug shots of wanted criminals in their computer gallery. In downtown Orlando, a similar video system is in place to give police quick notice of criminal mischief or traffic mayhem. Sure, some people are complaining about the intrusion into their law-abiding day-to-day lives, but most folks simply shrug it off as an inevitable fact of 21st-century life.

(Anyone who has seen Steven Spielberg’s new move Minority Report pretty much knows the score to come.)

In an essay titled “Privacy is Overrated” in a recent issue of GQ magazine, writer David Plotz was critical of the paranoia of privacy advocates. “The belief that because people know something about you, they care,” is a matter of “egocentric fallacy,” he wrote. Plotz pointed to the massive amounts of information already being collected and sold to other businesses via cookies on our home computers, and claimed that it’s all quite harmless a simple matter of capitalism in action. “You matter only as a consumer,” he argued. “Companies are gathering all this data about you not so they can reveal to the world that you read gay erotica. They gather it so they can sell you more gay erotica, or leather magazines, or whatever else a person like you would buy. They don’t care about you. You are not a person. You are [only] a wallet.”

And, many a wallet would come tumbling open for an on-line opportunity to see the true story of Rehoboth’s summer life. How about aiming web cameras at the front patio of the Blue Moon, the pool table at the Frogg Pond, and the pool deck at the Renegade? How about the sauna at the Rams Head? And, rather than just showing us the Boardwalk, why not set up in the World War II observation towers at Gordons Pond? There, a 360-degree panorama could take in the remarkable beauty of nature and its accompanying wildlife- all of it, including the two-legged variety.

The likelihood that Rehoboth soon will have such web cams all over town increases every day. Just this morning I read that Sony is beginning to sell a tiny new cell phone with a clip-on spy camera for only $330. The discreet, one-ounce digital camera (about the size of two thumbnails) allows users to take pictures anywhere and instantly send them wirelessly over the Internet. Just think of the possibilities. With a simple snap-snap, you can show off the guy you just met at Cloud 9 to all your friends back in Cleveland. And they can e-mail you back, telling you to dump him before it gets too hot and heavy.

Most importantly, none of us will have to miss an important weekend at the beach anymore. We’ll be able to put in our bids on items during Sundance auctions thanks to previewing them through our friends’ little spy cams. We’ll be able to check out the check-out lines at Lingo’s Market, seeing who’s planning to dine on lobsters and who’ll be settling for hot dogs. We’ll even be able to see what’s new on the menus at the Back Porch or Sydney’s, as our pals shoot their entrees and beam us pictures of their initial reactions to the flavors.

There is only one place in the Rehoboth area where Internet cameras should be banned. That’s along Route One between Five Points and the entrance to Rehoboth Avenue. Although some might consider the nightmarish photos of traffic gridlock a public service to motorists, truth is that such pictures would drive away far too many people. And without all the high-tech, Internet-friendly cameras those visitors would bring with them, the coming view for the rest of us might not be nearly so bright.

Hope to see you soon.