Who does Technology answer to?
Technology is usually created to either satisfy an odd itch in someone’s mind or to fulfil one’s wish to supposedly serve mankind in some way. But the reality is, how a technology is used solely depends upon how the public perceives it. If the creator is lucky, then the technology they created may be used in the way they envisioned it.
The area of technology I covered was the camera. A technology that is deeply embedded in our lives today, but close to a hundred years ago it was a novelty. My primary interest was to look at how major conflicts and wars affected the development of the camera, and whether it was ever meant for the purpose of war. Spanning over a 100 years between the 1880s and 1980s, I took a close look at events and people that played a key role in its development.
One of the key turning points in the development of the camera was the invention of the film roll by George Eastman in 1884. This was also the year he developed and patented the first camera, ‘KODAK’. From here one forth the trail leads to 3 parallel paths. One in the US, following George Eastman, and his company Eastman Kodak (estd 1888). The second with the Leica optical company in Germany. Finally, in Japan with the camera wars between Canon and Nikon. Each of these paths revealed certain common points but also have key differences and similarities in their outcomes. While they all started from a similar stand point each of these companies had very different endings. Kodak as a company held a lion’s share of the market till the early 2000s where their film roll and camera sales aided one another, at least till the introduction of commercial digital cameras. Today however they are not nearly as successful as they used to be, despite holding the patent to the digital camera for such a long time. Leica on the other hand was forced to move to Canada post World War 2, becoming a much smaller production team, its name fading out of public eye. Lastly, Canon and Nikon became giants in the field of Cameras holding a majority of the market and constantly competing against one another on the global stage.
All the information pertaining to cameras and their development is traceable through media pieces and through advertisements released by the companies. The advertisements are a good indicator of which demographic the company targeted, while media reports give us an idea of which demographics used the camera (apart from the targeted one). One good example of this is the ‘Brownie’. Kodak used the tag line ‘Give the Children Brownies’ in the advertisements showing us a clear indication that the Brownie was built for children to use. But media reports give us a clear indication that apart from children it was also soldiers who used the Brownie extensively. There are multiple such instances of where cameras ended up being used by a variety of other audiences apart from those targeted.
While the camera is only one such technology where the expected usage and actual usage had some differences, there must be a large number of technologies where the expected use, as meant by the creator/manufacturer and the actual use by consumers do not line up. Taking a deeper dive into this difference could also possibly give us an answer to why evolution of technology gets derailed from the original purposes it was meant for.
