The concert selfie. It’s a tradition as old as, well, maybe it’s not that old, but it’s been commonplace since the proliferation of the cell phone. Except Apple might have just developed some new technology that will put an end to that, as well as the shitty, shaky videos of concerts that everyone posts instead of putting their cell down and concentrating on the music. This goes back to 2009, when Apple applied for a patent on a camera technology using infrared signals. It’s taken seven years, but Apple won approval for the patent on Tuesday.

The technology will allow cameras to not just detect visible light, but infrared data. That could potentially mean that the data could be used to disable recording functions. One of the illustrations with the patent shows a band playing while a phone screen reads “recording disabled.” There are non-concert/show applications as well. The infrared data could make your phone receive data from something nearby, like a museum exhibit.

The concert implications are pretty vast. First of all, Glenn Danzig will be super psyched. And when bands are breaking in new songs, perhaps they could enable the phone to be blocked so the first time people hear new songs, they’re presented the way the band would like people to hear it, not via a cell phone while people are talking in the background. Of course, the social aspect of sharing cell phone pics of artists, pictures of you and your friends at shows, and all that stuff could be compromised, but it’s a small price to pay for watching an artist and living in the moment, as opposed to viewing it through your cell phone screen to record and never watch again. There will definitely be some people annoyed that their freedom to use their phone to record could be taken away, but that’s a whole other topic of discussion.

[photo, story via 9to5mac]