Today, the papers have been analysing what lead to Kodak filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

Headlines scream to the effect, “Kodak killed by the digital photography revolution!”

Not quite. A few facts:

Kodak invented the DIGITAL camera. In 1975.

Kodak were one of the first to market with a digital camera practical for use by businesses and real estate professionals. (My employer was kindly loaned one to help with an award winning project by Logitech who branded some of the early Kodak models.)

Lake Tahoe, taken by the author in 1995 with a Logitech branded early Kodak digital camera
(The original image was 768 x 640 pixels at max resolution – huge back then!)

Kodak were the first to market with digital cameras that took good pictures. And they should know, having a background that lends them to color theory and other photography essentials – not just fancy hardware.

Kodak were one of the first to market with innovative digital cameras, such as the LS633, the first device of any type with a high resolution (even by today’s standards) OLED display, in this case on the back of the camera for previewing photos with almost (printed) photorealistic quality. They too loaned my employer a camera to evaluate for a (hardware) project requiring next generation display technology.

Taken by the author in 2004 with a Kodak LS633 that featured a high res
OLED display that made checking photos in camera more reliable
© 2004 Taikitso

Kodak continued to design and launch innovative cameras – including the first high quality consumer compact with a flip out display allowing you to take a photo of you good looking – without first seeking a tourist to hold the camera.

Kodak cameras are very well built and feature excellent ergonomics and control placement and labelling – unlike most others on the market that require one to be an expert in the art of finger juggling. (When you are in a hurry to capture that split second – moment – such things matter.)

So, Mr. Blogger chap, why did Kodak get into difficulties?

Unlike Nikon, Canon, Pentax, Sony, Panasonic (Lumix), Samsung and others, Kodak ceased producing high end cameras such as DSLRS, ‘focusing’ instead on compact cameras.

Whoops.

With the advent of mobile phones featuring cameras whose image quality matches and in some cases exceeds compact digital cameras, Kodak had no alternative product line to rely upon for revenue.
(Note, they did/do make excellent sensors, although Foveon, Fuji, Sony and Canon are now competitors. DYK that Sony make the sensors used in Nikon DSLRS?)

All the aforementioned brands (and others) produce large sensor interchangeable lens cameras that thanks to optical zooms, shot to shot speed, pro image quality, manual controls and fits like a glove ergonomics, will always be one step ahead of the best phone camera.

Very sad to see Kodak go this way, however, Chapter 11 is not the end. For in America, you get a second chance.

*Farmer?

Update (20 Jan 2012) – There continue to be terrible bugs in WordPress (the whole entity, from the hosted service to the iOS app) has been full of mission critical failures. For example, this Kodak post has randomly changed without my input. The title vanished (I just had to re-enter it!) and parts of older versions of the post re-appear. It seems that the content management system is broken. This is embarrassing as it makes it look as though we are not editing our posts properly. It is free (although I pay for their self hosting version for work) so complaining is probably unfair, but you would think by now these long term bugs would have been fixed.

One of the subjects discussed within a dedicated page at Vision Aforethought > On > Gun Crime was a blunt analysis of why there are so many mass shootings in the US. It has little to do with the guns being easy to acquire, nor poverty, or family arguments, or drugs, or alcohol – even if those trigger and ‘lubricate’ the perpetrators behaviour.

* * * I N T E R M I S S I O N * * *

Horrors like this appear to be becoming more common in the UK, validating my observation that lack of inherent internal cultural restraint (BEING SPOILED!) and a me first attitude can lead to such behaviour.

Beyond the general dumbing down, what makes things even worse here is that for all the flaws in US culture, due to the history of the country, mature Americans do not go about life with the appalling sense of bitter entitlement that X-Factor, Big Brother, reality TV ‘business’ shows, social media and other sources of instant schadenfreude, gossip, false success and superficial mass ‘friendship’ generate.

(Irony of ironies, we are now EXPORTING our poop to the USA!)

People born into and living this muck are going to become, to quote, “Seriously f*cked up” and seriously f*ck up other people on their way down.

To make things even worse, one of the people responsible for turning British television into a bastion of trash received a dong from the Queen. Despair!

Sadly, the perpetrators and victims of all this are innocently unaware of their station.

How long before the tide turns and the people responsible for creating the contemporary British underclass are put on trial for abusing and damaging at least a generation with all the consequences?

“You Sir are charged with ruination of a nation. What say you?”

Fight back club: Comment with your ideas below. I’ve run out of oomph and have work to do.

What’s does INTERMISSION mean in the context of this blog? Indicates that there is a link just above referencing related content for your optional consumption before continuing with the post.

In the mean time, some depressing but obvious reading.

• Apple, Inc. begin to face serious credible competition in all product sectors before releasing yet another paradigm shifting innovation that gives them an edge again. (I know what is it, but will not disclose it.)
• Arab spring liberates many but forces up the price of oil once their citizens, like the Chinese, seek an improved quality of life. That is why the West liked having dictators in power – cheap oil!
• Climate change continues to have a discernible effect including a catastrophic ‘natural’ disaster that may or may not be the result of human activity.
• China continues to make rapid military and consumer technological progress, displacing the former cold war between the West and Russia, joining Korea in creating it’s own innovations, not those copied from Western companies. Japan evolved in the same way in the late 1970s after they found their creative spark.
• Next generation dynamic web apps based on html5 begin to offer robust credible alternative to local apps.
• Financial uncertainty further accelerates changes in human lifestyles.
• Irrelevant but cultish Mayan calendar expires leading many to move to bolt holes out in the wilderness as happens each time an apocalyptic prediction is made.
• Cancer and contemporary illnesses continue to effect more and more people due to decades of exposure to and consumption of processed foods, alcohol, radiation leaks, pharmaceutical drugs (Tom Cruise is spot on), household and personal cleaning products and more – costing health services and the economy billions, never mind the suffering and ethical considerations.
• US presidential elections will decide whether the (currently) most powerful nation on Earth continues a policy of sanctions and ‘UAV’ based foreign policy – or a no holds barred neocon approach. Meanwhile, the East gains technological, geographic and military superiority – but to what avail? Is paranoia justified? Only time will tell!
• Almost 15 years of dumbing down by the broadcast media and health and safety laws means a whole generation of maturing UK citizens will not be fit for ‘constructive’ revenue generating employment or military service, further weakening the economy and defences. The very opposite of contemporary Germany, Japan and China, whose workforce are efficient, intelligent and productive. Said issue predicted on this blog many years ago with a comparison between the UK and the Titanic.
• Elitist dystoptian nature of the London Olympics create controversy whilst the technology used to broadcast and manage it all will, like Wimbledon, have the same effect as war and the space race: Speed the optimisation and adoption of the technology towards an affordable price point. This will include Ultra HD TV, interactive results software, AI based face recognition security CCTV and more.
• Products based on flexible video displays hit the market making our current gadgets and home gear look clunky in comparison. Samsung have already demonstrated some impressive (hammer proof!) examples based on AMOLED technology.
• Increasing numbers of random people and animals in Japan and elsewhere down wind or down water continue to suffer the effects of the Fukushima radiation leak forcing governments to quietly focus on alternative energy sources.
• P2P wireless services and technologies finally trigger the beginning of the end of the greedy visionless old school business model cartel that is airtime service providers.
• Queen’s Diamond Jubilee creates a similar sense of (inter) national positive mood as this years wedding, despite the worrying issues listed elsewhere here.
• The first genuinely independent intelligent AI robot is announced for use in building security having been rejected by ageing Japanese citizens who prefer human company. This is not the first time a Japanese initiative aimed at an ageing population has failed. Research the 5th Generation Computer project of the 1980s.
• Ongoing scientific discoveries finally unravel core mysteries of the Universe that we have yet to prove, despite hints and teases over the last 12 months.
• Occupy X protests trigger the start of ‘fixes’ to corporate behaviour – and this dear reader is the heart of it all, to be covered in the much delayed WW4 post if and when time allows.

Much of the above will be fairly obvious to most, but with so many social, ecological, economic, national and global stability issues coinciding, it will be a very precarious period in human history. Beyond the death toll, consider the effects on the local and global economy of the quake and tsunami in Japan and recent floods in Thailand, just two coinciding disasters, not forgetting the fires in Russia and floods elsewhere that pushed up the price of basic foodstuffs, including rice. If we do not act thoughtfully, the quality of life we currently take for granted will be at considerable risk, and the wheels really will begin to fall off. Crowd sourced protest, visionaries, educated compassionate industrialists will save us, not the politicians, because no matter their party, beyond lack of imagination, politicians are too easily bribed into self serving (uhm, ‘political’?) decision making by special interest groups and underhand corporate maleficence.

Update: Vince Cable (UK) announces the banks are to separate city and consumer investments. Well there you go, it has already begun, that’s the power of democratic protest, in particular when more thoughtful politicians take note!
Update 2: I don’t mention H5N1 and other exceptionally dangerous threats because they are not tied to 2012, although they could render the above of lesser significance at any time…  

What will the AI(s) discover/see/hear/detect/sense/feel?

Which brings me onto us sentient ‘life forms’ here on ‘Earth’.

For a while now there have been some possible not yet proven 100% (disclaimer!) discoveries that put some of our* scientific theories in doubt. The explanation for most of these discrepancies in the last few weeks (Oct/Nov 2011) has been that the tools of our reality are flawed, so we are simply perceiving such abnomalies, when in fact, they may not exist because the datum by which we measure them is not based on truth.

If our own perceived reality is (as many others have discussed) also a simulation, and we are but humble AIs too, then if we’re staring into the depths of an ultra complex 3D simulated environment made up of neural nets, why should we expect any laws of physics to exist at all, after all, the laws are all a result of our own assumptions, (perceived) logic and rationale? IE, it’s all in our ‘minds’.

Does this makes sense? Do you get my point? What would an AI ‘see’ if attempting to use virtual ‘mechanical’ and ‘electromechanical’ tools to explore its perceived reality? If our Universe is virtual, then what is a supernova, a planet, a comet, an asteroid, a black hole!? Is the big bang when the software was first ‘run’? Are we looking at multidimensional galactic runtime code?

Faster than light back club: Comment with your thoughts please before I am consumed by recursive concepts.

This is (potentially) unreal, dude

*OK, ‘him’. Albert.

If all of this has been discussed before by any philosophers or writers, please let me know so I can reference them. Not had time to do any research on this, although I bumped into a particle physicist in Oxford the other day who mentioned an author I should read, but I omitted to make a note. Will send him to this page NOW! Ben? Enlighten me!

This is probably the most exciting subject to discuss than anything else, equals the sensation of catching a wave when surfing, the ultimate ‘Earth’ high!

1. Ignoring all the annoyances, such as loading bars, security matters, processor hogging and horrific breaches of accepted (essential!) UX methodologies, any technology that needs to be ‘plugged’ into a browser and/or constantly upgraded on it’s host platform is problematic if the device is designed to eliminate any barriers to efficient productivity and/or entertainment. (Something I have been saying for over a decade now when chatting with Flash advocates.)
2. Where Adobe missed a massive opportunity (assuming it didn’t try), was to work directly with hardware partners to develop a family of mass market devices that harnessed an optimised version of Flash for the actual full on OS/GUI, therefore giving Adobe full control over the end user experience, as Apple have done so well with iOS. They did tinker with this once, with the LG Prada, a phone that while short lived due to the arrival of something more shiny and magical in 2007, did have a certain WOW factor thanks to a very attractive and compelling Flash powered touch screen interface. Remember the colour butterfly on the otherwise monochrome Prada home screen? ’twas nice! If a few years ago (pre-iPad), Adobe’s partners had introduced such products, Flash developers would have had an ideal platform to share their ware – just as the superb Apple App Store has spawned a whole generation of independent developers. The well specced and rather nice RIM PlayBook could have been that device, but it was too late and too small.

As things stand, and this may sound odd considering I have been preaching html5 for a while, it may not too late for Adobe. They are still leaders in content creation and the market for tablets is significantly larger than that for the PC – and we are only at the start. Just this Christmas, middle class wood floored sunlit homes will include an iPad for high quality content browsing, gaming and home/media control, a Kindle or Nook for reading and maybe even a Droid tablet (Xoom etc) for any sweet toothed geek in the house. #ICS That’s several tablets per home. But there is still nothing offering the compelling immediacy of the iPad.

Content is what drives sales of hardware (as long as the hardware is seamless in operation) and so as long as our toys can read and output standards compliant data, the OS is becoming less relevant. “It’s the browser, stupid!”

Fight back club: Use what works.

Update: Well well well, three holes in the ground, a day or so after posting this, Occupy Flash has formed! (Most) excellent if it helps rid us of plugins – not matter their technology.

Update 2: Perfect illustration in the Daily Telegraph to go with my comment above re a household of tablets. One flaw, youth don’t use Twitter!

Update 3: I stand corrected! From recent news articles, it appears youth are now gravitating towards twitter! I suppose it was inevitable that it would not take long for SMS messaging habits to migrate to a medium that allowed youthful mindfarts and shopping mall gossip to be broadcast to all and sundry!

Unfortunately, we were either betrayed or stupid. Or both.

(I hoped that I would finally gain more time for other community causes, with little need to continue to commenting about the subject of this post or within the separate Towards Dystopia section of Vision Aforethought, believing we were no longer threatened by such issues. How wrong I was.)

Just in the last few days there have been several examples of new laws and behaviour by council jobsworths that will do what the SS and KGB did so well not much more than 50 years ago, namely, create a society where we fear doing everyday things that previously were taken for granted and caused little or no harm to anyone. In fact, they were part of what made life entertaining, enlightening, intriguing and surprising!

From about 4 or 5 years onwards, like all (not most) of my friends, I blew up hundreds of balloons, blew party whistles, shot an air gun in our back garden (from 10), climbed trees, swam in rivers and lakes, made things out of wood and nails – and engaged in many other activities out in the physical world. Whilst I think once in a while (over a period of many years), we did get hurt (slight scratch here, bruise there), not one of those I know ever suffered a major injury. (Ah, Dominic fell out of a tree, and Sebastian fell of his bike, but bones do repair, and they are alive and well today. Bless!)

Today of course, more and more youth are fed diets of junk food that did not exist 20 years ago, sit in front of televisions watching programming that is intellectually 1/10th of what we were (thankfully) bought up on whilst deposits slowly build up in their arteries, others are disallowed or discouraged from engaging in strength and character building activities at school and elsewhere. All this leading to a whole generation (some now becoming clueless subservient parents too, God help their children!) of humans who will die prematurely of diabetes, cancer and/or heart failure several years earlier than my generation will. In fact, the number of people who will perish that way will be an order of magnitude greater than those who die every year from blowing up a balloon.

Those who have studied their history know that in reality, all this has nothing to do with safety, and all about what most dystopian regimes do, and that is projecting their personal insecurities by prying into our homes (What? You don’t think a swarm of jobsworths will pounce on your home because little Robbie blew a party whistle? We’re almost there.) and extinguishing any sense of fun or danger that does not emanate from a ’2D’ medium, in this case, that opiate, Saturday morning television.

Fight back club: God help us all, really.

What is really worrying? A dangerously large proportion of people through no fault of their own have absolutely no clue as to what is going on.

Oh, and if you believe that that former bastion of liberty and trust will come to our rescue, think again!

The email was from a good friend I met in 1992 whilst he was working in Computer Attic on University Avenue in Palo Alto. An Apple authorised reseller, the Attic was staffed by people who loved what they sold in an enthusiastic manner that to this day, no other company or brand has been able to emulate. The email was a short comment that eluded to the fact Steve Jobs had passed away – my first notification of the sad news.

The reason why people are drawn to Apple is because in their hearts they know there is someone at work behind the scenes striving to perfect the company’s current innovations whilst at the same time working on the next ‘insanely great’ thing.

Apple is in effect, sentient.

That passion, awareness and drive offers some an inner confidence, that no detail will be ignored and our current and future sensitivities and (often) subconcious desires will be taken care of, even if sometimes (frustratingly) according to Apple’s timetable, not ours.

The thoughtful effort put into crafting the gentle ‘ding’ that greeted my awakening this morning is what makes Apple different, thanks to Steve Jobs.

Update (Nov 2011): Despite a lifelong interest in Steve and Apple, and close association with the company and some key employees (on a personal and business level), it is only since reading the large number of quotes from his official biography (and some recently uncovered video recordings) that I have learned so much about Steve Job’s philosophies and thoughts on so many subjects. Each of which is rational, logical and deeply compassionate, the latter of which is often hidden when such a CEO is disciplining and micro managing his team to ensure said philosophies are adhered too within the company and product! I have always felt the same way and think it a great pity these thoughts of his were not made more public prior to his passing. Such a pity too so few companies are lead by people who ‘get it’ and see beyond their station.

Update (Dec 30 2011): In what one could call a momentary lapse of reason, when I originally posted this, I somehow left out the most important fact – the email I received on the iPad was regarding Steve’s passing and the first I learned of the news. I have updated the post above to reflect this. Strange how the mind works, or doesn’t.