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The Future Is Not What It Used To Be
Why do we always get it wrong?
I bought my first digital camera in 1998, a Fujifilm finepix MX-700. I was an early adopter. The moment I saw it, I knew it was going to be the future of photography. It seemed obvious to me that people would prefer digital over film. For those of you too young to remember, film was messy, expensive and slow. You had to buy the film, in sets of 12, 24 or 36 photographs, insert it into the camera, shot very carefully (only one shot per pic), no feedback and finally take it to the shop to develop which also costed money. It was clear it was a bad system…but not to everyone.
When people saw my Fujifilm, (notice the irony about the word “film”) mostly they were impressed, but quite a few said to me: “there is no future in digital”. I wonder if they still have film cameras now.
I’m not bragging about my ability to see the next trend but sometimes it is so obvious and yet, most people don’t see it.
And it is not just your sister in law or your uncle, it’s big companies with a huge budget in research and marketing. Kodak didn’t see it coming either, nor did Blockbuster, Nokia, or even Microsoft.
In 1994 Bill Gates predicted that the internet had no commercial potential, Blockbuster started an international expansion renting DVDs in the late 90’s (when…
