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May 07, 2006
Digital Failures and Features
From Mike Johnston's The Online Photographer, a very nuanced analysis on why we get the digital features and products we get and why we don't necessarily get what we want:
As with any emerging technology, there are substantial "accidents" in the market as well: ways in which the market evolves that are neither intelligent nor guided strictly by demand (or else guided by demand that is partly wrongheaded, for example, the "full-frame sensor" shibboleth). Some factors remain "hidden" or "masked" and are neglected, while others become prominent and therefore get attention.
An example of the latter is something I've been saying for a number of years now, which is that photographers should thank their lucky stars for the extremely poor longevity of early inkjet prints. What that did was shine the spotlight of consumer attention on print life expectancy (LE) and force the manufacturers to address the issue.
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Had early inkjet prints commonly had LE's of, say, 20-30 years, no one would ever have paid any attention to it and we'd probably still be stuck with those numbers today.
Posted by Joshwa at May 7, 2006 10:32 PM