In consumer land, I read some sad news today about the final nail in the coffin for instant photography. Polaroid has announced that they are to cease production of their instant photography film and close three facilities in USA, Mexico and the Netherlands. This happens just a year after they ceased producing instant camera.
The Polaroid camera is an interesting example of how a lo-fi gadget can capture the imagination of generations. The Polaroid camera is a modern incarnation of the Land Camera as invented by Edwin Land. Land, a Harvard grad started Polaroid started as a company producing sunglasses and camera filters that polarised light. After further research, Polaroid adapted Land’s work on polarising light filters and created sheets of photography paper that could develop pictures.
Let’s face it, the Polaroid instant camera never offered crystal sharp images. Snaps often suffered from unexpected blushes of light. Bad exposures were a very real and present danger. Boxes of instant film were expensive. All challenges that were overcome by consumers lost in the romance of this cute little gadget at the height of its popularity in the late 1970’s.
The important lesson to learn from the Polaroid story is the way it changed consumers’ perception on the immediacy of photography. For the very first time, any man on the street could buy an off-the-shelf gadget that he could use to take snaps and develop in a handful of minutes. Imagine for a second, if Marty McFly scooted back to Connecticut of the early 1900’s, romanced Land’s mother and he was never born. Imagine how much lower the adoption of digital cameras would be, if Polaroids didn’t exist.
You might argue that widescale adoption of immediate photography is inevitable. And so it is. The real question is how did the Polaroid camera change the expectations of ameteur photographers over the generations. Would the democratisation of ameteur photography be any different? The nub of the story is that the lessons of yesterday, inform and influence the gadgets of tomorrow. As unsexy and white-bread as a Polaroid is, it ushered in a new immediacy in citizen photography. The development of snaps was no longer the preserve of spotty nerds called Nigel or Damien, who did it every other evening after chess club in the local photo shack. Polaroid invented immediate photography for the masses.
For all of the popularity of the Polaroid instant camera in deep memories of our shared pop culture, there’s only just a little buzz amongst bloggers about its death. Honestly, I expected much more. The Polaroid story is an important one for the technology community. It is indicative of paradigm shifts that hardware and gadget manufacturers are facing. Especially in the present, when confronted with the insatiable demand for digital gadgets. It’s the way of things. Old favourites fade and are succeeded by young upstarts. I had believed that tech bloggers would latch onto this fulcrum and follow through on analysing the importance of the Polaroid story. Wider still, I expected social commentary on mass consumer habits. Is that too much?
For a lot of geek bloggers, it’s all about the next flashy piece of kit. Something fast and zoomy that can use to ratchet up nerd points or put decal stickers on. Almost like flashing our Brownie badges at each other. Sexy topics are all too easy to spot like the new Telsa car, the next micro laptop or newest video compression algorithm. Yes, all very fine subjects but some of the bost endearing gadgets are those that almost everyone had. Gadgets that embody an era. Gadgets that sit in our attics a little worse for wear and gathering all too much dust. Like the Atari, a fondue set or a Polaroid instant camera. And before you ask, I’m not doing a kind of Manky Monday as championed by fellow Limerick man, Fústar. Rather, I’m pointing out that we as tech bloggers ought to take a step back once in a while and look at the wider consumerist story.
Every day is a footnote in our shared social history, the technology we use as a community does not define us. We define it. Niche gadgets that sit on the geeky wild site need to be covered, but let’s not forget that white-bread technology is the engine that drives our economic machine. On the backs of every gadget that your mother, my mother and their generation buy, lies the revenue stream that will be ploughed into next generation R&D that will yield inventions of the future. Mass consumerism breeds it’s own patheon of legends - Polaroid, Walkman, Gameboy. Lets follow their stories too and see how they influence our appetite for technology.
{ Polaroid photo by: *Solar ikon* }