RIP Kodachrome 1935-2009

By Jim Swoboda

A sad day indeed!

Not sad because Kodachrome is going away, but because Kodak still faces becoming obsolete (stock is down 97% in past 10 years).   The digital camera is often attributed to have been invented in a Kodak lab in 1975. Yet, who made it mainstream? Not Kodak. Why? Because the forces of status quo were to strong and those in charge of the film business likely squashed this new, threatening technology.

The question is:  was Kodak in the film business to produce images/memories, or were they in the images/memories business and the media was not important?  

I suspect had the latter half of the question been explored, we would have hundreds of millions of old Kodak digital cameras laying around just like the old "Brownies" as those too were made obsolete by new innovations, albeit film versions.

The number of other companies which have missed this kind of change is astounding.

The entire music industry risked irrelevance because they believed they sold CD's and LP's, not music. Hence, a young man with a computer almost put them under with Napster because music could be distributed in a new, cost effective way.

It's also likely that is why the Detroit 3 are at the point of irrelevance. They appear to be in love with the internal combustion engine and cannot see any other way. Even when the new ways are within their own domains, the power of the status quo quickly buries or burdens them in ways they can not escape to become the next great idea. It takes an outsider without the baggage of the past. Just visit Telsamotors.com and perhaps see a glimpse of the not to distant futures.

History is there to learn from. To bad too few do.

Date: Wed, 24 Jun 2009 10:04:18 EDT