August 21, 2007

Navel-gazing has long been the province of mystics, experimental novelists, adolescents, patients in Freudian analysis, and bloggers. Recently, though, the belly button has been synched directly to the shutter release. Digital cameras and personal networking Websites, such as MySpace and Facebook, have created a generation of teens (my daughter among them) who continually photograph themselves by holding out their lenses at arm’s length, shooting inward, then uploading the resulting snaps onto their personal Web pages, for the entire Net to have a gander. Posing, posturing, posting; posing, posturing, posting.

Now comes a gadget that make it infinitely simpler to shoot oneself silly. (Thanks to Adam Seifer, of Fotolog.net, for drawing my attention to this ultimate in “autofocus” devices.)

Forget the tripod. Call it the MyPod.