"Light at the end of the tunnel, but what lays around the corner?" iPhone 5s 12-01-'14

“Light at the end of the tunnel, but what lays around the corner?” iPhone 5s

(3 min. read)

As many people I frequently visit a fair amount of websites but only very few over considerable lengths of time. One of those is John Gruber’s Daring Fireball who regularly links to interesting articles around the web. I often enjoy his comments and analyses. When starting this blog over a year ago I indicated his linkblog as one of my main inspirations to set up my own Red Planet Dust blog in the colophon. I have posted here more then once triggered by a post of John. My blog turned out a bit differently though: less a linkblog linking to others with a comment while more aimed at content creation.

John links to an article by Craig Mod in the New Yorker: “Goodbye Cameras”. John Gruber, also links to a more elaborate “companion” article “Photography, Hello”.

Craigs’ articles have a double appeal to me: first and foremost Craig describes his/our changing relationship to his/the tools of photography which is highly typical for my own. I have been into photography since my mid teens when I got my first SLR, or better said I started using my dad’s and in time it seemed mine…

Secondly he is able to summarize the changes in photography in a way it is a pars pro toto for the broader changes brought by digitization and networking, two of the major trends in our time disrupting so many value chains. This appeals to me from a professional business developer and strategist angle as well.

I feel triggered to set up an article analogues to “Goodbye camera’s / Photography hello” for payments. First I will contemplate on the content and the parallels a little more before sharing. In the meantime this post will be “just” a linkblog pots. I will leave you with a few quotes form Craig’s articles:

…it seems clear that in a couple of years, with an iPhone 6S in our pockets, it will be nearly impossible to justify taking a dedicated camera on trips…

A general — and now obvious — rule for the digitization of any medium is that analog will always have a place, however niche.

As more images touch the network, and as the information orbiting those images becomes more compelling, the archival value of the standalone picture as a social artifact — no matter the megapixels — will continue to diminish.…stand-alone cameras, no matter how vast their bounty of pixels, seems strangely impoverished. They no longer capture the whole picture.

Photography itself begins to split into two entirely different beasts: the networked image laden with metadata but possibly lower pixel density, and the silver gelatin print, a static, hidden artifact of high visual value.

Those invested in the old will rightfully take issue with the new. Because anyone who loves and has invested in a way of doing something will not — and should not — give it up without good cause. But that doesn’t mean the changes aren’t real.

The value of discomfort in the march forward: …. discomfort is where potential lives. Potential rarely rests on a chaise lounge by the beach. Potential almost never lives in the systems cradled by the incumbents. In fact, discomfort and change go hand-in-hand.

Five years ago we had no network in the pocket. Now we have full HD video and high-quality image capabilities with us at all times. Five years from now, I would be very surprised if many of the technical complaints … remain.

Being close to the network does not mean being on Facebook, thought it can mean that, too. It does not mean pushing low-res images to Instagram, although there’s nothing wrong with that. What the network represents, in my mind, is a sort of ledger of humanity. The great shared mind. An image’s distance to it is the difference between contributing or not contributing to that shared ledger.

The smartphone deceives because it is a tool for the masses. A doodad for posting to Facebook. But for those photographers among us interested in plumbing the depths of the network’s effect on images, it’s a far more serious tool — because it’s so native to the network — than most anything else available today.

There’s another side to this conversation that tends to get overlooked. The most transformative side. It’s the side of accessibility and of giving voice to those hitherto voiceless. For, if you peek into any emerging world — India, Africa, South East Asia — you realize many have never known a camera, and never will. But increasingly they will grow up with a pretty good lens in their phone, and an even better one in just a few years to come. So, yes, the networked lens means selfies — in the same way Twitter means, “Just had some awesome coffee” — but it also carries with it the chance for storytelling on a global stage by those who have never before had that chance.

Software ate the camera, but freed the photograph. It makes me uncomfortable, and if you care about cameras, it should make you uncomfortable, too. But — and here’s the trick — try to see if there isn’t something valuable in that discomfort, if it doesn’t bring with it a way to look at photography with fresh eyes, with new excitement.