David Brin calls it The Transparent Society ‚– a Panopticon where everybody, not just the State, spies on everybody. Brin thinks this could be a Good Thing, in fact.

David Pogue astutely points out in the New York Times that, although it is clear nobody really wants to use videophones to talk to each other’s grainy faces, a killer app for mobile video might be realtime monitoring of webcams. Your child’s playschool. Your spouse’s bedroom. The gauges you are supposed to be watching down at the nuclear reactor while you are having a coupla brews at the local. Check out this list of public webcams you can access from Logitech’s new Mobile Video sofware.

Among the downloadable goodies is Logitech’s Mobile Video software, a tiny program that lets you build a list of Logitech’s golf ball video cameras (Webcams) all over the world. At any time, wherever you happen to be, you can choose a camera from this list and, after a five-second wait, view the image it captures on your cellphone screen.

The picture is on the small side - 160 by 120 pixels, or about the size of a Wheat Thin - and the quality is not what you would call high-definition. In fact, even calling it “video” is an act of the purest kindness; instead of smooth motion, you see a still frame that updates itself every two seconds to two minutes, depending on the technology gods’ sense of humor.

But never mind all that. The color, contrast and detail are easily good enough to make out what’s going on in the picture. Furthermore, Logitech says that in the coming months, new technology on its end, including a new version of Brew, will greatly improve the video quality of this weeks-old service.

Meanwhile, peering into cities and buildings hundreds or thousands of miles away, right now, in real time, is a giddy, heady rush. You can see the weather in Manila, the traffic on the Brooklyn Bridge, or business at something called Eskimo Joe’s Bar. You see that the sun is still shining brightly in California as you’re heading home for bed in New York - yes, you know that intellectually, but it’s somehow mind-expanding to see it live. You feel like a spy, or Dick Tracy, or maybe one of those surgeons who operate by remote control thousands of miles away.

Actually, what you really feel like is a superhero who has just been bitten by some radioactive insect but does not yet know the extent of his powers. Now you have telepresence, now you can beam your eyeballs all over the world. But once the novelty wears off, what good is it?

Logitech has a few suggestions, the most persuasive of which is the ability to inspect the traffic before you drive. Already, about 50 public traffic-cams are operational, covering such New York City hot spots as the Midtown Tunnel entrance, the Brooklyn Bridge and 42nd Street. As you buckle up for your commute to or from work, you can flip open your phone for a live cam’s-eye view of the traffic you are about to encounter, while there is still time to take an alternate route.