iOS camera disalbed near tourist attractions

Part of traveling internationally, especially to popular and “exotic” locations, involves taking photos. I observed this firsthand almost everywhere we went in Japan. People went crazy, especially at locations like the Fushimi Inari and Kinkaku-ji in Kyoto. It was exhausting, but it also makes sense when you’ve paid an enormous amount of money and spent a lot of time getting to a place you may never visit again.

That said, it does diminish the magic of going to special places. This got me thinking… what if there were device-level restrictions that disabled photo capture in certain contexts? For example, if you take a certain number of photos or are within a specific proximity of a place, your camera could be disabled. This would 1) make people very angry and 2) allow people to unplug and truly enjoy a special place in the world.

I think it’s highly unlikely this gets built, and sadly it’s likely this problem is only going to get worse as more people go online, but I do wish sometimes we could go back to an analog world in moments like this.

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