The rise of digital photography in the 1990s, and the metaverse

I was recently back in my hometown, cleaning out some old boxes. I found a copy of an engineering magazine that I contributed to in college in the late 1990s. I wrote an article entitled “The Death of Photography.” 

In hindsight, that title doesn’t make much sense as the article was about the fierce debate about whether digital photography could replace analog film, the only way to capture images at the time. Photography as a method would survive no matter what. Photography did the opposite of die; it was about to thrive for the next 25 years thanks to digital technology. 

Lessons learned from these debates mirror the current discussions about the utility of the metaverse today. 

The year was 1995, and many photographers, including myself, thought a digital replacement for film was impossible. 

 Digital photography was very new to the field. Quality was poor, and the thought of streaming videos was inconceivable. As college photographers we saw professionals from Sports Illustrated using early digital cameras on the field during college football games while we rapidly swapped out our 36-shot film canisters between plays. Their cameras looked clunky. We, the film photographers, and some companies like Kodak did not see the paradigm shift coming. Ironically, an engineer who worked for Kodak invented the first digital camera in the 1970s. It was the descendant of this product that put Kodak out of business as they chose to eventually focus on photographic film and paper instead of digital. One of the images from the article shows a Kodak digital mount for a standard camera body, showing they were innovating early in the space.

The article I wrote was tackling the debate of the time, the resistance of moving from analog comfort to the digital unknown. These transitions are sometimes hard to see when you are in them but become very clear in hindsight, and this cycle was not new. It is the evolution of new technology to replace the old. It happened to audio systems when the transistor replaced tubes, compact discs replaced vinyl records. People often favor the old for its familiar look, feel, or sound, not necessarily because it’s better. 

Some say digital photography quality surpassed film in the mid-2000s, maybe even earlier when digital cameras became widely available. Digital cameras have higher resolution, higher ISO, and more range than film; a few minutes in Adobe Photoshop can make a digital image mimic its film ancestors with a few filters. The lack of dependency on chemicals to develop and a darkroom to print only amplified the digital adoption. Processing and distribution became instantaneous. 20 years later, the iPhone camera quality continues to make improvements year after year. In hindsight, the digital option seems obvious and film photography a technique relegated to art schools for students who want to honor the old methods. 

So, what does this have to do with the metaverse? 

We are on the precipice of another change, the intersection of our analog world and a digital one, the “digital twin” of what we know as reality. The concept of the metaverse has existed for many years in concept, thanks to the creative exploration of the concept in books and film that describe an interactive 3D virtual world. Represented by an avatar, people can explore a space and interact with others. The metaverse as a persistent, digital world to enable shared experiences across both the physical and digital worlds. 

Today’s critique of the metaverse technology is that it is “not realistic,” “not useful.” It’s “only for gamers” who use it on a very limited scale. The pandemic pushed the world faster into digital spaces than it maybe wanted to go. We found we could work, and to a more limited degree play, digitally. As organizations continue to transform, the metaverse can be a space where people meet and collaborate around the world. Many technology companies see this as a new frontier and the way in which we, and especially the next generation, will engage with each other, a world without the restrictions of mobility or space.

While some people shun the idea of spending even more time online as many of us still enjoy listening to vinyl records, the technology has the potential to make our online interactions more meaningful and the way we connect more familiar. Advancements in artificial intelligence, machine learning, and modeling & simulation are making this a nearer term reality. 

Like with all technology, we need to be patient. Some ideas will work, some won’t.  Many of the first tablets, smart phones, and social media are long gone, but their descendants survive. 

I’d like to re-read this post in 20 years and see if hindsight makes the metaverse outcome as clear as the digital photography victors of the 1990s are today.