Live Webcams, Streaming Videos, and Social Isolation: Place and Virtual Presence in the Time of Coronavirus

Live Webcams, Streaming Videos, and Social Isolation: Place and Virtual Presence in the Time of Coronavirus

Zachary Fruhling
(Mount Dana and Mount Gibbs, Tuolumne Meadows, Yosemite National Park)

(Mount Dana and Mount Gibbs, Tuolumne Meadows, Yosemite National Park)

I have been feeling rather isolated lately, having left my home state of California a year and a half ago, having left behind countless friends and family members, and with my new state of Idaho already being more isolated than the San Francisco Bay Area. Like many people around the country and world, we have also been isolated at home for several months now because of the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic.

Place has always been important to me, in some Heideggerian sense. The meaningful connections I have with the places I love have become part of my identity as a Being-in-the-World (In-der-Welt-Sein) or Dasein (“being there”) as Heidegger called us humans. (See Being and Time by Martin Heidegger.) From my hometown of Vacaville, California to my favorite coffeeshops and haunts around the Bay Area, from the places I once lived like Syracuse and Santa Cruz to my favorite places on Earth like Yosemite’s High Country and the California’s Central Coast, I find myself longing for a taste of the familiar, to feel connected with the places I came to love during the time I once spent there.

Although live webcams have been around for around 20 years or so now, it’s really only during the past few months while on coronavirus lockdown that I have really begun to embrace the power of technology like webcams and live streaming videos to connect me, albeit remotely and at a distance, with the places I already love, and with the places I have grown to love because of these virtual windows and now long to visit in real life.

There is something magical, or at least quasi-metaphysical, about being able to call up a live video feed of your favorite places from around the world at the click of a mouse or a tap on the screen. We are 21st-century sorcerers and sorceresses gazing into the planes of our two-dimensional crystal balls, those tablet-sized magic mirrors with which we transcend the limitations of the present, crossing vast oceans, plains, and deserts in an instant.

(Live webcams and streaming videos are like magical crystal balls, extending our vision beyond the boundaries of space and time.)

Nothing beats actually being in a place you love, of course, and the bond we make with the various places we encounter in the course of our lives can be real and strong. How lucky we are, however, to live in this technological age, in which it’s possible to cross barriers of space and time and be magically transported, at least virtually, and in our imaginations and memories, to the places on Earth we love most. I may not be able to climb Mount Everest, at least not without more resources and a heck of a lot more conditioning! But I can visit the summit of Everest with the ghost of Edmund Hillary by webcam, lurking in the Platonic shadow of the glories of great adventurers and great civilizations both past and present.

The science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke once wrote that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic (see Profiles of the Future by Arthur C. Clarke). So it’s no accident that modern technology, from webcams to YouTube, gives us magic-like powers akin to the transporter in Star Trek, whisking us away to strange new worlds right here on our own precious jewel of a planet, teeming with life amidst the empty sea of our cosmic neighborhood.

(The Transporter Room in Star Trek: The Next Generation—Live webcams and streaming videos are like the transporter in Star Trek, whisking us away to strange new worlds and connecting us with the places we love in our imaginations.)

(The Transporter Room in Star Trek: The Next Generation—Live webcams and streaming videos are like the transporter in Star Trek, whisking us away to strange new worlds and connecting us with the places we love in our imaginations.)

The following are some of my favorite live webcams and streaming videos of places I’ve lived, other favorite places I miss and love to visit virtually, places I’ve come to know only online and long to visit someday, and some virtual birdwatching spots around the world that I enjoy watching from time to time—to feel connected with the world when the places I love most seem far away. Enjoy!

Virtual Tours of Places I’ve Lived

Vacaville, California

Syracuse, New York

Santa Cruz, California

Campbell, California

Live Bird Feeder Cams

Since I was a grad student living adjacent to the Nearly Lagoon in Santa Cruz I have been an avid birdwatcher. Thanks to 21st-century live webcam technology, I can go birdwatching around the world by webcam, pursuing my love of birds even in shadow of coronavirus social isolation. Here are a few of my favorite live bird feeder webcams from the United States and around the world:

Other Favorite Places I Love to Visit Virtually

The Roman Forum

Ruins of Pompeii

Tuolumne Meadows (Yosemite National Park)

Blogging Nietzsche—Nietzsche's Poetry: "Dialogue"

Blogging Nietzsche—Nietzsche's Poetry: "Dialogue"
Underdogs: It's Always More Fun to Be David Than Goliath

Underdogs: It's Always More Fun to Be David Than Goliath

Related Posts