Imaging technology
Ever since printers were first able to reproduce drawings, advertisers have been using images to communicate desire to their customers instantly and with impact.
The use of images gave rise to catalogues and mail order shopping – the parents of today’s ecommerce and retail sites. The product photography that makes these inanimate objects desirable has helped technology companies such as Apple both create and target consumers’ seemingly endless obsession with shiny new products.
In the world of commerce, bigger is better, so printing technology has been pushed to the limit, allowing images to cover the sides of skyscrapers or an airliner’s fuselage, for example. Everywhere we turn we are confronted with images – and most of them are selling something.
Imaging has allowed scanning – of barcodes and the newer quick response codes to identify places, products and promotions. Such technology has turned stock and supply-chain logistics into an exact science. In the giant warehouses of internet retailer Amazon, every action is recorded by a scanner.
Soon devices will be able to scan our bodies and use clever software to show us how a pair of jeans will look on us, without us having to leave our chair.
Imaging has spawned entire areas of work – photographers, retouchers and printers – and product lines for equipment and lighting. And as analogue imaging has given way to digital, some giants of the past have fallen, such as Polaroid and Kodak.
In the office, the humble fax machine – a breakthrough device when it appeared that had the then revolutionary ability to scan documents and send them across phone networks – is already obsolete. But its stablemate, the photocopier, is not.
The imaging category also includes ultrasound, used to detect flaws in objects as diverse as precision engineered components and babies in the womb. And radar, which made possible today’s busy but safe airspace. And for companies that make things, the ability to scan a prototype, feed the image directly into a computer-assisted manufacturing process and turn out exact replicas has slashed time and costs, allowing far quicker reactions to changing market conditions.
Imaging has redefined security and identity checks. And with facial recognition technology now in modern smartphones, a person’s image has become the key to their digital life.
There is more to come. In the age of Instagram, the online photo hosting service, people increasingly communicate using pictures rather than words or speech.
The first version of the Google Glass wearable imaging device will let you take a picture by blinking, and it will not be long before we will be able to record our life in high-definition video.
Some call this the death of privacy. That may be, but it is also the birth of a new commerce.
Bede McCarthy