The Stages of Technology
by
Dave Palmer
January 1996
In response to a comment about the cost of technology required
to produce convincing faked UFO photos, I wrote:
One of my side interests is watching how technology filters into
society. It's been my observation that new technology generally
follows a series of steps on its way to being taken for granted:
1: It's a lab curiosity. Only a few technophiles even know about it.
Maybe it gets written up in Popular Mechanics.
2: It's introduced commercially. Most of the general public still
doesn't know about it. It's usually expensive, and only a few
professionals use it. Ever hear of Serial Infrared? It's on
about 75% of new laptop computers right now, but it's still at
this level.
3: It becomes known. Although it's still expensive, and mostly only
used by professionals, a fair percentage of the public knows about
it. This is where high-end computer film special effects are now.
4: It goes public. The price comes down to where average people can afford it.
However, it's still too new for most people to understand or use well.
Recordable CDs are about here.
5: It "hits the streets." This is the point where the general public begins
to understand it enough to use it well. More to the point for skeptics,
this is the point where it is in widespread enough distribution that
unscrupulous individuals are using it. Ask the US Secret Service (which is in charge
of tracking down money counterfeiters) how they
feel about color scanners and ink jet printers...
6: It becomes commonplace, and then taken for granted. People find it hard to
imagine what life was like before it. The telephone, TV, and cars have
been here for years, in the industrialized nations, at least. Cel phones
are rapidly approaching this point in the US.
Although the digital manipulation techniques to produce convincing faked
UFO photos (or any other sort of faked photo) got to step 3 sometime around
10 years or so ago, and got to step 4 maybe five or six years ago, they've only
reached step 5 in the last year or so. Just lately, I've begun to see
really well-done faked images (mostly involving naked celebrities) appearing
in cyberspace.
The technology to produce good faked videos is maybe just barely at 4.
(As an aside, the special effects makeup technology used to produce the alien
in that alien autopsy film is sitting somewhere around 3 or 4. That
creature was built either by an average pro creature shop, or by a talented
amateur.)
The period between steps 5 and 6 will be a tough one for skeptics. I believe
we will see a flood of faked photos almost good enough to be real, but the
teeming masses will still not understand how easy it is to produce a fake, or
they just won't care.
The move to step 6 will have profound implications for society. I think that
within the next five years or so, a lawyer will stand up in court and say "your
honor, the other side has produced photographs that appear to show my client is
guilty. However, this is how easy it is to fake something like that..." And
photographs will never be admissable evidence in court again.
Fortunately, the ultimate death of photography as evidence must still wait
for the ready availability of the technology to produce faked negatives, although
consumer-model digital cameras are coming up fast, and may short-circuit this by
eliminating negatives even in authentic photographs.
The technology to produce good faked negatives is sitting somewhere around
step 3, and is used mostly in movie special effects production.
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