I’ve Seen the Future, and It’s In 3D (d)

I’ve said most of what I have to say for now about the possibility of an imminent surge of activity around 3D imaging, and what it could mean for still photography. Having done so — and having thereby created a public forum in which others can add their comments to my own — I’ll move to different subjects, until some new developments inspire me to return to that set of issues.

As always, I welcome comments, pro and con and otherwise, from readers. Personally, I’m much less interested in hearing from readers who simply want to put their chips on 3D becoming pervasive or, conversely, remaining a niche market than I am in those who choose to speculate on how a 3D-everywhere environment would affect all branches of still photography: commercial, fashion, scientific, illustrational/editorial, photojournalistic, and of course fine-art. That’s the richer conversation to which I’d hoped my provocations would lead.

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Now that you’ve read what I’ve gleaned from the latest Consumer Electronics Week in New York, with its showcasing of digital tech that’ll hit the shelves of your local store within the next few months, some backstory. What’s a critic and historian like me doing at such an event?

Initially, the only one of these tech expos to which I paid attention was what’s now called PhotoPlus — its full title is PDN PhotoPlus International Conference + Expo — sited at the Javits Center in Manhattan and founded in 1983 by Photo District News (PDN). It’s shrunk drastically since its heyday, down to half the floorspace it occupied at its peak, due to the transition from analog to digital in photography generally and the absorption of still photography into the broader computer-based multimedia environment. Separate, digital-specific trade shows for those industries have siphoned off some of the previous exhibitors and attendees. Current exhibitors include the major camera and film manufacturers, the makers of commercial printers, and dozens of small firms that produce backdrops for studio photographers, collapsible strobe reflectors, custom wedding albums, camera bags, and the like.

I started to attend PhotoPlus decades back, not out of fascination with the tech end of the medium but because it seemed a useful and efficient way to get some broad sense of how the photo industry — and the then comparatively incremental evolution of the tools, materials, and processes — affected both professional and amateur photographers, as well as the images they produced. Apparently I shared that interest with few of my colleagues; I rarely saw any other critics, historians, theorists, or curators there. That didn’t discourage me from attending; to the contrary, I’m convinced that my awareness of the early incursions of digital elements into what was an overwhelmingly analog medium resulted in part from nosing around at such events.

Once I switched from the Windows platform to the Mac, in the late 1990s, I began to attend MacWorld Expo as well. Also staged at the Javits 1998-2003, as a smaller version of the annual west coast Apple blowout, this nonetheless was a robust display of all things Mac-related. That included Apple’s own product line, of course, plus the Mac-specific iterations of programs like Filemaker Pro, Microsoft Office, and such. But it also enabled the showcasing of hardware and software specifically and often exclusively designed for the Mac.

Open to the general public as well as to the media, MacWorld Expo helped to build the sense of community that many Mac users share, due in no small part to the user-friendliness of Mac developers, able and willing to discuss Apple technology, apps, and the like in accessible language (unlike many of their Windows counterparts). I got to hear several Steve Jobs keynotes, talked shop with smart people who helped me understand what went on under the hood of the machines and programs I used, and began to understand the tools with which I worked.

I’d say that my first tentative steps toward geek status happened at those MacWorld Expo events. In 2003 IDG World Expo, which produced the event, renamed it MacWorld CreativePro Conference & Expo, apparently hoping to reach more of the “creative professions” market in the New York area. Must not have worked, because in 2004-05 the producers returned the east coast Mac roadshow to Boston, where it had originated, before ending its east coast edition entirely. Alas.

I didn’t get up to Beantown for those last two east coast sessions, and I’ve never managed to make the west coast event. But by the time MacWorld Expo left New York  City I’d become accustomed to having some sense of what lay around the bend in the digital world. So I began attending smaller events in New York, aimed mostly at the press, with the Consumer Electronics Association’s twice-yearly souks at the top of my priority list. Though specific to neither photography nor the Apple platform, the CEA Line Shows and such concurrent events as The Digital Experience include exhibitors that connect to both, as a result of which my antennae get a workout several times a year, and I have some advance warning about where the technology’s moving.

As one consequence of the proliferation of digital systems, and their pervasion of all aspects of contemporary culture, the market — or, more precisely, the marketing — has subdivided into multiple specializations, and as these grow they generate their own expos. Thus, for example, we presently have such events as:

• Interop New York, which bills itself as “the IT industry’s most comprehensive conference and expo,” highlighting such developments as cloud computing, virtualization, security, and networking in the business/corporate environment;
• the Entertainment Technology Expo, “the entertainment and media industry’s showcase for previewing ground-breaking technology and learning about the latest trends in content creation”;
• the Digital Asset Management Conference, which “explores the urgent global issues of digital asset management in the sectors of advertising, entertainment, media, publishing, sports, museums, and higher education”;
• Web 2.0 Expo, “a conference and tradeshow for everyone who cares about embracing and extending the opportunities created by Web 2.0 technologies”;
• the International Society for Technology in Education Annual Conference, “your chance to see, touch, and learn about products and services from more than five hundred top ed tech exhibiting companies in the world!”

All of these intersect with my own interests in one way or another; if time allows, I might attend any of them. Perhaps fortunately, I can only handle so many expos, conferences, festivals and other such gonzo events per year, and my appetite for them lessens steadily. Too much wear and tear on the psyche, even if no travel and expense are involved.

Yet I learn a lot at each one I do attend. So, when my energy level and schedule and budget allow, I go. And, often, pass what I glean from them along to my readers. What’s just over the horizon doesn’t necessarily suit my taste, but I’d rather see it coming than get run over by it.

And as one unintended, unexpected consequence of attending the tech expos, I’ve achieved a definite level of geekiness — which makes me, given my chronological age, a geezer geek. I don’t feel especially geezerish, nor for that matter particularly geeky. But I can converse with segments of the tech crowd and understand much of what they say; and I find myself explaining technical issues to people less versed in these matters than I, who seem to find those distillations useful. Who’d have thunk it?