With the camera, still and video, becoming omnipresent through its commonplace inclusion on cellular phones, has come a level of thought-lessness.

Because it is now so easy to record events that would otherwise have been seen only by those present, we have become technological peeping Toms and Theresas.

And what we often choose to peep on is very, very gruesome, as is the case with the case of Desrine Irvin, who was killed by an out-of-control garbage truck on Hagley Park Road in early July.

As this newspaper reported on Thursday, pictures of Irvin at her moment of death are making the Internet rounds, with the dead woman's brother in Canada seeing them and a cousin of a close friend getting a look in Cayman.

Naturally, the family is upset and Irvin's sister, Janet Ffrench, is appealing to those responsible to stop circulating the pictures.

We can only add our appeal to the family's and hope that good sense and conscience will prevail, stopping any further spread of the family's hurt. We do believe, though, that in many cases of this nature those who pass on the horrible images they receive do so more out of insensitivity than deliberate cruelty.

As one person with whom The STAR spoke said, "I did not give it much thought, but now that I hear that the family feels hurt by the pictures being circulated I feel sorry that I forwarded them in the first place".

We need to think about how the impersonal technology that is so readily available to us has very real consequences on the lives of others before we press that button.