pThe ability to view recorded moving pictures has had a major impact on human culture since the development of the necessary technologies over a century ago. For most of this time people have gone to the movies to be entertained and perhaps edified, but in the meantime television, the videocassette recorder VCR, the digital versatile disk DVD player, the personal computer desktop and laptop, the internet and other technologies have made watching moving pictures possible at home, in the classroom and just about anywhere else. Today, moving images are everywhere in our culture. Every day, moving picture cameras record millions of hours of activity, human and otherwise, all over the world your cell phone makes a little video of your friends at a party the surveillance camera at the bank keeps on eye on customers journalists' shoulder-carried cameras record the latest from the war zone and across the world film artists work on all kinds of movies, from low-budget independent projects to th