The Stages of Technology

by
Dave Palmer
January 1996



In response to a comment about the cost of technology required to produce convincing faked UFO photos, I wrote:


One of my side interests is watching how technology filters into society. It's been my observation that new technology generally follows a series of steps on its way to being taken for granted:

1: It's a lab curiosity. Only a few technophiles even know about it. Maybe it gets written up in Popular Mechanics.

2: It's introduced commercially. Most of the general public still doesn't know about it. It's usually expensive, and only a few professionals use it. Ever hear of Serial Infrared? It's on about 75% of new laptop computers right now, but it's still at this level.

3: It becomes known. Although it's still expensive, and mostly only used by professionals, a fair percentage of the public knows about it. This is where high-end computer film special effects are now.

4: It goes public. The price comes down to where average people can afford it. However, it's still too new for most people to understand or use well. Recordable CDs are about here.

5: It "hits the streets." This is the point where the general public begins to understand it enough to use it well. More to the point for skeptics, this is the point where it is in widespread enough distribution that unscrupulous individuals are using it. Ask the US Secret Service (which is in charge of tracking down money counterfeiters) how they feel about color scanners and ink jet printers...

6: It becomes commonplace, and then taken for granted. People find it hard to imagine what life was like before it. The telephone, TV, and cars have been here for years, in the industrialized nations, at least. Cel phones are rapidly approaching this point in the US.

Although the digital manipulation techniques to produce convincing faked UFO photos (or any other sort of faked photo) got to step 3 sometime around 10 years or so ago, and got to step 4 maybe five or six years ago, they've only reached step 5 in the last year or so. Just lately, I've begun to see really well-done faked images (mostly involving naked celebrities) appearing in cyberspace.

The technology to produce good faked videos is maybe just barely at 4.

(As an aside, the special effects makeup technology used to produce the alien in that alien autopsy film is sitting somewhere around 3 or 4. That creature was built either by an average pro creature shop, or by a talented amateur.)

The period between steps 5 and 6 will be a tough one for skeptics. I believe we will see a flood of faked photos almost good enough to be real, but the teeming masses will still not understand how easy it is to produce a fake, or they just won't care.

The move to step 6 will have profound implications for society. I think that within the next five years or so, a lawyer will stand up in court and say "your honor, the other side has produced photographs that appear to show my client is guilty. However, this is how easy it is to fake something like that..." And photographs will never be admissable evidence in court again.

Fortunately, the ultimate death of photography as evidence must still wait for the ready availability of the technology to produce faked negatives, although consumer-model digital cameras are coming up fast, and may short-circuit this by eliminating negatives even in authentic photographs.

The technology to produce good faked negatives is sitting somewhere around step 3, and is used mostly in movie special effects production.



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