Posted on 06/08/2016 6:21:13 PM PDT by SamAdams76
Kodak always thought of a camera as a separate device. People had to think, "I am going out, should I take my camera with me?" But then people started carrying around smartphones, and the phones had cameras included with them. The quality wasn't quite as good, but it was "good enough," and so people suddenly stopped choosing to carry along their separate camera, because what they were already carrying was good enough. Kodak was completely locked out of the phone market, and never saw that coming.
I agree that we are going through a period of tremendous transformation. There will be a lot of wonderful things that will come about, but a lot of pain for individuals to adjust. The great depression was like that too. It was prolonged because the transformation from a horse based society to a car based society was occurring at the time, throwing people out of work, with little skills for the new economy. This is why I am strongly against the large immigration that we are allowing right now. It would be easier to digest rapid technological growth if we were not also absorbing lots of immigrants, which typically have performed the work we are now getting rid of.
Just thinkin’ of Paul Simon’s song Boy in the Bubble, which was skeptical of progress’s ability to make us finally happy. In particular, the ironic closing lines of the chorus: These are the days of miracle and wonder, so don’t cry, baby, don’t cry, don’t cry.
Kodak’s judgement of consumer tastes was tragically myopic.
They didn’t get into the 35mm film business until very late, and never made a consumer 35mm negative-to-print film that was as good as Fuji’s.
Interesting bit of trivia ...
Originally, 35mm ‘cameras’ were used as light meters by the Hollywood movie industry, using movie film stock, hence the sprocket holes.
Rather than plunge into the 35mm camera market, where companies like Nikon were firmly entrenched, Kodak felt the consumer needed simplification, not f-stops and knobs to fiddle with. So that came up with the disc camera/film.
The film technology for the disc produced a picture so grainy, it was like viewing the scene through a lens smeared with cream of wheat. As to processing the disc negative, a Kodak VP was on hand to watch the first demonstration as the equipment took an undeveloped disc and flicked it out in the room, fatally exposing it and gaining the processor the nickname of ‘disc launcher.’
Eventually, Kodak adopted T-grain technology for the disc and the 110 film camera, which made possible grain-acceptable pictures all the way up to 5x7!
Venturing into digital photography, well, more like sticking in a tippy-toe, Kodak invested its future (and thereby forced the photofinishing industry to buy a bunch more equipment) in the IX-240, named APS for consumers, and deemed Another Piece of Shit by users. The camera produced some digital encoding, but still relied on film to take a picture and could make a decent 8x10! Progress!
Even when not dealing with the amateur market, Kodak was arthritis-ridden. Their R&D performance was so sluggardly that by the time new professional equipment reached the shipping dock, it was obsolete and outmoded.
Kodak was a product of its quasi-monopoly in the US: lazy, obese, and complacent.
How about the prediction that energy will magically get cheaperm
Well, there will always be demand for sex...
“Loser pays” would do wonders here, suppressing the need for more lawyers, as frivolous litigation mitigates.
“I am seriously quite convinced the Antichrist comes as AI.”
I am not, but I believe that God has a plan, and that plan includes the technology that is being invented and used.
We live in interesting times, my FRiend.
One of the things I find unlikely in the article is cheap solar power. Be nice, but what we really need is a cheap efficient battery. Possible, but has proved quite difficult.
7 billion will die.
....so you are saying I *will* be employed.
Prediction: The Powers That Be see how poorly extermination worked the last century. This time, look for a sudden drop off in fertility.
Zika seems like a test run.
Wow, in the early 1900s they perfected heavier than air flying machines and it all went to hell in the transportation industries after that!
Seriously, I see your point. I retired as an Army Aviator in 2005, and since then I’ve seen how Unmanned Aerial Vehicles have steadily crept into jobs previously performed by human pilots. From aerial reconnaissance, to armed reconnaissance, to full attack platforms and soon for cargo delivery and not too far from that for robot troop deployment if not human troop transport as well.
And now as a travel and tourism executive, we are seeing how the share economy is disrupting ground transportation (Uber, Lyft, etc.) and lodging (AirBnB, VRBO, etc.), and more recently, concierge services (livingua).
My point here, I guess, is that humans adapt well to new tech, and that it will come to a point that as a species we will come full circle and live simpler lives again while machines do most of our chores. That could be good, since people are not having as much children as they used to and labor will be scarce, as it is already in most advanced economies. We will have more time for creativity instead of trudging through mind-numbing work. Like a new renaissance, when Medici-sponsored geniuses didn’t have to worry about making a living and could concentrate in their God-given talents.
Kodak had marvelous inventions in the lab that could have easily saved them, but their management was still living in the 19th Century.
I remember visiting their Rochester lab sometime in the 90’s at the height of their big copier business when they were actually beating Xerox because the Kodak machines were WAY more reliable.
We went to look at some OCR software they were developing to sell, but as I remember almost everybody had OCR just about done at the time, so no big whoop.
But we DID see a big 4-color copier that was revolutionary. This was at the time when smaller, Ethernet-attached printers were just starting to come out. So I was REALLY excited about what they had and suggested that if they just tacked on a rasterization engine and an Ethernet interface, they would have a world-beater of a product WAY ahead of the competition, even though they were just working on a high-speed, high-capacity model.
Well, our excitement was squelched faster than the Pointy-Head Boss could whip out a firehose when we were told management wouldn’t allow that because the only market they could possibly imagine for the color copier was CEO’s of the Fortune 500 companies might want one for their own offices so their secretaries could prepare color hand-outs for them for big meetings, like board meetings, etc., and the marketplace wouldn’t be much bigger than that for color copiers/printers.
I shook my head and absolutely knew right then and there on the spot that Kodak was going to go bankrupt, and it was just a matter of time.
True story.
“... then government control becomes quite unnecessary.”
We will still need government to protect us from other people, and other governments.
Human nature will still present threats, so computers will be used to monitor and profile, and analyze each of us - completely.
But who will watch the watchers?
muslims inbreeding, abortion and faggotry will do the rest.
There is a nanotechnology battery that basically is a large-scale capacitor. Seconds to charge, retains charge indefinately, you can discharge the nanocells as power is needed.
Kodak was killed by digital cameras,not smartphones. Compact digital cameras,in particular, a huge segment of the camera market, has been killed by smartphones.
Rochester is a ghost town now.
At it’s height, Kodak employed 170,000 people. Now there are maybe 6,000 people, mostly security guards to make sure nobody runs off with the remaining equipment.
Oh no silly. They are going to change that for the likes of us. It will be demanned for sex...
I use Uber all the time. It’s great and cheaper and higher quality than a cab.
I also use Turo - a sort of AirBNB for rental cars. I have a very small car, so need to rent a big one from time to time, so I get one from a private person via Turo.com.
My smartphone has replaced:
- My camera
- My maglight
- My GPS
- My guitar tuner
- My metronome
- My landline phone
- My phone book
- My note pad
- My mp3 player
- My Calculator
I also use it to check currency rates, weather, make calls, send text messages, skype messages, FB messages, Viber and read PDF books when I’m waiting for something.
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