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WebCams once promised to revolutionize communication, but they were an idea whose time had not come. Bandwidth for two-way phones was far too limited so the concept was hijacked by pornographers peddling voyeuristic smut.

But now that the hardware is cheap and modems much faster, WebCams are once again in vogue, getting a little more respect by entering commerce and civic life.

Take Sheriff Arpaio of Arizona, who likes to call himself ‘the meanest sheriff in the country’. He has just installed four WebCams in his jails, saying he believes that the public has the right to know what's going on there. The nation's first-ever ‘jail cams’ give us a pervasive (though painfully boring) look at life in a maximum-security prison. The idea behind it? Pure PR, even though the official version is safety. The whole world could now keep an eye on our incarcerated brothers and sisters.

If this seems a little extreme, it is an indication of where the Web is headed, in an attempt to network everything in its path. Even ignoring the adult sites, the list of WebCams is interesting and bizarre. On an Amsterdam balcony, one site called www.watchthemgrow.net has a camera tracking the growth of three Cannabis plants. A Peregrine Foundation in Canada had three live WebCams on nest sites. A Colorado taxi driver keeps a camera trained at his passengers, and updates the video using a cellular modem. More interesting than all of this is a camera in Jerusalem aimed at the Wailing Wall. It is more than a window into the holy city. The site offering a bit of analog assistance to viewers who want to place their own prayer at the wall, asks people to type text into a web window. The owners promise that the prayer will be printed in the old city of Jerusalem and placed at the wall.

The real resurgence of WebCams is related to an increasing trend of the networked economy to connect people of common interests. Cyberspace, after all is not for the digerati, but for diverse webs of ordinary people. No offence to peregrine lovers and taxi drivers, but WebCams can be put to greater use, supplementing (not replacing) real world communities. Armed with a camera, it’s not difficult to see the business and political ideas waiting to take off. With the exception of watching dental appointment, every service sector offering an inside view of the workplace, or those that requires monitoring, is a potential contender.

Take childcare. Now there’s a customer-base (parents) waiting to be exploited –especially in areas where caregivers do not have the trust one expects. Parentwatch.com is a company that has WebCams installed in 150 Day-care centers across some thirty states in the US. Two cameras per class. Pictures of each day-care site are uploaded to a central server, and parents in a particular location who sign up with a password, can use it to check on their kids from their workplace. There is no cost to the school, because it is the parents who pay for the service, about the same price as what they would pay an Internet Service Provider. The real profit will someday come from not the subscriptions but the e-commerce opportunities that would take off from the database of subscribers. Competitors are rife, with KinderCam.com and WatchmeGrow.com also after the same model.

Then there are car-owners who can be equally paranoid. The ones who polish their tyres with a toothbrush after a shower of rain. Or anguish over whether the mechanic at the auto-shop is leaving greasy fingerprints on the dash. An Arizona company called Joe Auto (joeauto.com) has a WebCam that allows owners to keep an eye on their car as it’s being worked on. So how about watching your expensive dress being dry-cleaned? Or your Dalmatian being groomed? Don’t laugh. Pointing a camera at whatever you mistrust, may be a unique way of earning it back.

Which brings us to the mother-of-all mistrusted businesses in Sri Lanka: elections! Apart from trust, imagine the revenue we could gain, and anguish we would spare if we hooked up WebCams at every voting station? Multiple WebCams, just in case some are vandalized. Bullet-proof ones, just in case, you know, the bullet-ballot theory doesn’t quite work out. Political transparency would have a digital accomplice. And you never thought the Internet era would be of any darn use to the political process! What better ‘international monitors’ than the cold, objective ones with an all seeing eye, steadily uploading the antics at the ballot box. When you think about it, it’s not such a revolutionary move at all. Closed-circuit TV cameras do the work of security officers, don’t they? Just to be equitable, both PA and UNP could be allowed a camera each for that truly bipartisan point-of-view. Just for the entertainment value, some of the highlights could be broadcast at prime time. To cover the cost of the Internet connection and hardware, these Voting-Cams could be sponsored by TV stations. Or better still, allow the stations to bid for the unedited footage. That will put a stop to the bickering and whining for another six years.

And what will they do with the WebCams after the elections? Take a lesson from the Sheriff. Donate them to our own maximum-insecurity prison -just in case some politicians end up there as well.