Smile! You've just been caught out on camera phone

Sometimes the most obvious questions about technology don't get asked? Questions like why would I want to take photographs with a cellphone? Or when I want to stop using my computer, why do I have to go to the 'Start' button? (Ok, that one has been asked.)

But there are plenty of other issues that we just accept because, well, that's the way it's always been. It's only when a complete novice, or a child, asks you why your Web-based email system doesn't have a spell checker, or why people use 'IM' to talk to colleagues who are sitting less than six feet away from them that you start to think: maybe I'm not asking enough questions about this stuff?

As for people taking photographs with their Nokias -- that's easy, people want to share magic moments with their loved ones, right? Moments like when two stunning blonde twins in an open top sports car decide to pull over and give a middle-aged man a peck on the cheek. Yeah, as if. Click, mail that one to the family album.com.

The real reason for the rising popularity of camera phones has nothing to do with magic moments. There simply aren't enough of these for Nokia to build a business plan around them. The real reason has more to do with human frailty, and capturing it in pixels than it has to do with magic moments. Hey look, here's a picture of the bishop dressed in drag, has a lot more pulling power than auntie's holiday snaps mailed to you directly from Eastbourne. The risk is that this will to lead to more caution in an already overly cautious world.

Ultimately camera phones will be self-defeating because bad behaviour will be driven underground by them -- and that's a bit of shame. Pubs used to be places where people who ought to have known better would routinely drink too much and do something daft -- like falling over, being Kylie in the karaoke, recounting the time they dressed up as a chicken and ran around Liverpool Street station yelling 'Cluck, cluck, I'm a pleasant clucker', or insisting that everyone in the bar have a large scotch on them to celebrate their birthday. Click, click, click. Watch out -- there might be a camera-phone about.

Time will tell if this an overly gloomy assessment of the prospects for bad behaviour in camera-phone future. What is undeniable is that camera phones mark the continuing progress of the multi-function device.