The Great Digital Swindle...

[Roger Hicks]

As people are not selfless . . . .

They are, actually. People don't work ONLY for greed and self interests. If they did, business would be impossible to conduct: everyone would constantly be checking on everyone else for evidence of cheating, slacking, etc., and no work would ever get done.

There are countless ways to run a society and an economy, and selling digital cameras with lots of hoop-la is a superb case study in how it's done. For anyone except a professional photographer, a camera is a want, not a need, and competes as such with numerous other wants such as motor-cars, sofas, meals in restaurants, wrist-watches, more leisure time, foreign travel and electric bread-makers.

Watching how people are persuaded to spend money on one want and not another is a constant source of entertainment for those who think. Those who do not think will barely notice how they are being manipulated: who remembers Vance Packard's The Hidden Persuaders? While the expression "It's a new toy" is amusing and ironic on one level, it soon slips into an unquestioning acceptance of how things are, and an assumption that they cannot be otherwise.

THIS is the relevance of the OP's question.

Cheers,

R.

 

[Prest_400]

My answer is a resounding NO to the "swindle".

Digital has given us really beautiful, controllable colors,
easy "darkroom", an almost unbelievable available light possibilities.
Clean, clear images.
Not perfect granted, but ahead of the other systems.

I wouldn't blame entirely and dismiss digital media, it's wonderful in its own way and what is brings us in a convenent quality. Related however is the immaturity of digital media and how it brings obsolescence into the table.

Hold on, Doug. Exactly WHY people keep buying new stuff is what the thread is about -- and this is inseparable from economic theory, which in turn is politically driven. So the political/ economic/ philosophical bit is precisely what the thread is about.

This is why I now spend more time on the Amateur Photographer forum in the UK. Sometimes, thinking things through does lead away from the number of pixels on the latest camera, and results in a modest dose of philosophy, politics and economics. Such considerations do not seem to destroy the AP site.

You can of course close the thread if you don't like the fact that philosophy, politics and economics have been introduced. But you can't pretend that it has departed much from the original (mostly philosophical) question.

Cheers,

R.

I like Roger's point of view on the philosophy and ethics this leads to.
And I've just read on a tech site that on this year Samsung has moved about 100 Million cellphones and tablets. What happens to that when it's discarded (probably most of them "gone" by 5 the years mark). How are those resources needed to manufacture obtained and when it's discarded, how it's managed? Is it all sent to a thirld world landfill?
Sometimes I wondered if the cameras contain Coltan products. A few years ago it was given attention because most of it came from and financed Congo's conflics.

 

[Michael Markey]

They are, actually. People don't work ONLY for greed and self interests. If they did, business would be impossible to conduct: everyone would constantly be checking on everyone else for evidence of cheating, slacking, etc., and no work would ever get done.

There are countless ways to run a society and an economy, and selling digital cameras with lots of hoop-la is a superb case study in how it's done. For anyone except a professional photographer, a camera is a want, not a need, and competes as such with numerous other wants such as motor-cars, sofas, meals in restaurants, wrist-watches, more leisure time, foreign travel and electric bread-makers.

Watching how people are persuaded to spend money on one want and not another is a constant source of entertainment for those who think. Those who do not think will barely notice how they are being manipulated: who remembers Vance Packard's The Hidden Persuaders? While the expression "It's a new toy" is amusing and ironic on one level, it soon slips into an unquestioning acceptance of how things are, and an assumption that they cannot be otherwise.

THIS is the relevance of the OP's question.

Cheers,

R.

I said some time ago that I wouldn`t comment on such matters.
I now find myself doing so because I agree wholeheartedly with that analysis .
It is a matter of deep regret to me that the UK has seemingly stopped being a mixed economy.
Want not need is something which it benefits all of us to ponder on , I would suggest.

Panem et circenses indeed.

 

[Rodchenko]

Thanks, Roger, for an interesting and thought-provoking thread. It's something I've wondered about for a long while, and should be aired more often, even if there is a whiff of Emperor's New Clothes about even daring to question consumerism. I wholeheartedly endorse your last post, and need to ponder before I respond to this discussion in more detail.

 

[pdh]

as Roger's postings seem to be being tolerated, I'll repost the one of mine that had been summarily deleted.

people are not selfless and always try to gain some advantage

This belief is often repeated, yet it has very little evidential support except in virtue of being often-repeated.

the experiment of socialism has proven over and over again that in practice [it] just doesn't work.

What I find dispiriting is that so often these discussions, participants fall back to "If you're not for it, you're against it" positions.

Either/or is not very useful; "and" is much better

 

[cosmonaut]

It occurred to me this morning, whilst reading through the Nikon Df thread, that people were taking fantastic digital photographs ten years ago with cameras which you can barely give away these days. Nevertheless, many of us seem to be salivating like Pavlov's dogs as each new multi-thousand pound/dollar/euro camera body is released, even though the actual impact on the quality of our photography is likely to be negligible at best. Why is that? Are we all slaves to the photographic industry's marketing people? I suppose we must be.

We live in a got to have it now disposable world. Thanks in part to Steve Jobs.
I see people, I am some what guilty, of buying a camera and wanting something else before I get the first one broke in.
We want cameras with shutters that have a 100,000 click life span and get rid of them before we put 1000 shots on them.

 

[Scrambler]

Active Film Gear. by Ko.Fe., on Flickr

I uploaded this picture today and realized one thing about digital cameras. 99% of them are ugly and not so pleasant to hold.

While the rest of y'all were spinning out in the realisation that economics and photography were related to politics and society (!), I had an epiphany of my own...

Ko.Fe. had posted a photo of my user cameras. OK, perhaps not exactly the same, but I own almost 1/2 the cameras in his collection.


Cameras in us by Scrambler@4350, on Flickr

I don't know what it has to do with digital swindles, but perhaps almost as much as Marx. Because my Fed 2, Communist camera that it is, has gone on a long march.

I call this the RFF swindle. The sharpest photos from this lot are from the Zeiss Netter 515. Second camera of my film revival. Then again the nicest are using the Nikkor 85/2...

BTW - photo with a Pentax K100D at 800 ISO

 

[alistair.o]

Gents, if y'all have run out of things to say on the thread topic, it could be closed. Or, curved back away from political-economic philosophies... 🙂

Doug, I would be less than truthful if I tried to say that I stumbled across your post. I had read one or two comments but hadn't got a clue as to what you'd actually said so, I came looking and re-read the whole thread up to-date.

In this age of political and economic sophistry it indeed would be refreshing to find a discussion that did not at some point touch upon money and freedom (or lack of it) but the synic in me would wonder where the catch is or I'd be waiting for the punch line! especially considering the host of all these discussions is a business man who does, and indeed must, sell to survive and that involes promoting the latest product(s)

Your post is a nice thought Doug, but I feel it is only that. From the first glimpse of mankind to the 'closing of the book' there has been, is and always will be largesse and avarice.

There is wisdom in allowing the truth. Even Balaam's ass spoke truth to the prophet and the prophet answered "...You have made a fool of me!..."

This thread is an eye opener for all who may wish to consider.

 

[Sparrow]

I said some time ago that I wouldn`t comment on such matters.
I now find myself doing so because I agree wholeheartedly with that analysis .
It is a matter of deep regret to me that the UK has seemingly stopped being a mixed economy.
Want not need is something which it benefits all of us to ponder on , I would suggest.

Panem et circenses indeed.

... they should really check that they actually need the circus imo ... not just give them out willy-nilly

 

[sojournerphoto]

I said some time ago that I wouldn`t comment on such matters.
I now find myself doing so because I agree wholeheartedly with that analysis .
It is a matter of deep regret to me that the UK has seemingly stopped being a mixed economy.
Want not need is something which it benefits all of us to ponder on , I would suggest.

Panem et circenses indeed.

I too agree with Roger's post, wholeheartedly, and with Michael's.

The equation of want and need is a modern economic credo that is articulated and bent to making us ever more consumerist, but is of course a gross distortion of reality. I no more need a camera than I need Fois Gras or Beluga Caviar. Nice to haves, but no more.

I was musing the other day that one of the outcomes of our current western economic system has been to ensure that people who make things earn less than people who don't. Small wonder the economy is less mixed than we would like. I work with a number of manufacturers of varying scales and they all are proud of what they do, but feel undervalued by the state and the media.

 

[sojournerphoto]

Oh, if we can't discuss ideas in a friendly and considerate manner, even if they're not about pixel count or dynamic range, we are much the poorer.

Mike

 

[Sparrow]

Oh, if we can't discuss ideas in a friendly and considerate manner, even if they're not about pixel count or dynamic range, we are much the poorer.

Mike

... yes, boringly I agree with you and Roger, and Michael and I have talked about it at length. However I fear the moderation ethos will not allow the discussion to continue, we have already had one interjection to point out where we are misguided.

 

[Roger Hicks]

. . . The sharpest photos from this lot are from the Zeiss Netter 515. Second camera of my film revival. Then again the nicest are using the Nikkor 85/2...

This is indeed central to swindling -- and it's an example of how people swindle themselves, or allow themselves to be swindled by meretricious advertising.

Most people don't actually want better technical quality: they want more convenience. They aren't even sure what "better quality" means: you draw the distinction yourself between "sharpest" and "nicest". But they NEED speed and convenience because they have so little free time.

So here's a thought. Maybe, in a different society, with reasonably stable employment, people could take their jobs for granted and do (let us say) an honest 20 or 30 hours work a week for an honest 20 or 30 hours' pay, and actually enjoy their photography (or golf, or cycling, or whatever) without the fear of losing their jobs or feeling the need to buy totally unnecessary new cameras. Instead, they could really get the most out of their Nettars and the like, and enjoy life, instead of living in fear.

Cheers,

R.

 

[Roger Hicks]

A "high standard of living" does not always provide a high quality of life -- at least from where I sit.

Which was, indeed, my precise point. No "happiness surveys", for what (little) they're worth, indicate that Singaporeans are even as happy as most other cultures, let alone happier. This rarher suggests first, that the correlation between happiness/quality of life and material standard of living is, once one is above subsistence level, negligible, and second, that a culture predicated on the acquisition of material goods does not rely on the free market. A more accurate summary of a recipe for unhappiness might be "the acquisition of material goods at any cost".

Cheers,

R.

 

[alistair.o]

What do all the "excess" humans do to survive? Right now they scramble and kill for the scraps.

How do you force the aggressive and ambitious not to work?

etc...

'moderate' the rewards

 

[Scrambler]

This is indeed central to swindling -- and it's an example of how people swindle themselves, or allow themselves to be swindled by meretricious advertising.

Most people don't actually want better technical quality: they want more convenience. They aren't even sure what "better quality" means: you draw the distinction between "sharpest" and "nicest". But they NEED speed and convenience because they have so little free time.

So here's a thought. Maybe, in a different society, with reasonably stable employment, people could take their jobs for granted and do (let us say) an honest 20 or 30 hours work a week for an honest 20 or 30 hours' pay, and actually enjoy their photography (or golf, or cycling, or whatever) without the fear of losing their jobs or feeling the need to buy totally unnecessary new cameras. Instead, they could really get the most out of their Nettars and the like, and enjoy life, instead of living in fear.

Cheers,

R.

Perhaps there is fear in my photography with the Nettar - I fear not nailing the focus esp on such a big negative. And with the Nikkor I can nail it, have sharpness mm thick if i want, and everything else looking dreamy. I like that look - it's nice 😉

I am fortunate, Roger, that I really could work 20 hours per week, meet my bills, have no fear and do what I want. It turns out that part of what I want looks like work and people pay me to do it...

In some places it certainly isn't fear that keeps people working, it's starvation. Of course not so many of people in that condition have internet. Or cameras.

So I take the discussions a little with a grain of salt. A new FF digital camera isn't world peace, or the global living wage, eradication of HIV or any other worthwhile thing. It's an expensive way to achieve what could be done already with century old technology albeit with a little more fussing.

Perhaps that's the the true digital swindle. The workflow advantage for most people doesn't exist. Previously Joe Average took his or her exposed film to a shop and they gave back prints. Joe glued the ones he/she liked into an album (or slipped them if he were cheap and didn't care if they lasted). Now she needs to plug this into that, move files around, log into whatever, upload to the "cloud." Maybe he prints something - at the same shop, with the prep work done herself.

 

[Roger Hicks]

(1) What on earth do you mean by "excess" humans?

(2) Tax the buggers

Cheers,

R.

 

[Roger Hicks]

Perhaps there is fear in my photography with the Nettar - I fear not nailing the focus esp on such a big negative. And with the Nikkor I can nail it, have sharpness mm thick if i want, and everything else looking dreamy. I like that look - it's nice 😉

I am fortunate, Roger, that I really could work 20 hours per week, meet my bills, have no fear and do what I want. It turns out that part of what I want looks like work and people pay me to do it...

In some places it certainly isn't fear that keeps people working, it's starvation. Of course not so many of people in that condition have internet. Or cameras.

So I take the discussions a little with a grain of salt. A new FF digital camera isn't world peace, or the global living wage, eradication of HIV or any other worthwhile thing. It's an expensive way to achieve what could be done already with century old technology albeit with a little more fussing.

Perhaps that's the the true digital swindle. The workflow advantage for most people doesn't exist. Previously Joe Average took his or her exposed film to a shop and they gave back prints. Joe glued the ones he/she liked into an album (or slipped them if he were cheap and didn't care if they lasted). Now she needs to plug this into that, move files around, log into whatever, upload to the "cloud." Maybe he prints something - at the same shop, with the prep work done herself.

Highlight: Indeed. This is ALL predicated on being a citizen of a rich country in which material superabundance has been achieved -- which will be under increasing pressure as other countries strive for the same. You and I disagree little, if at all (this applies to your entire post, not just the highlight).

Cheers,

R.

 

[Roger Hicks]

Addendum: "ambition" and "greed" need not be synonymous.

Cheers,

R.

 

[Scrambler]

Highlight: Indeed. This is ALL predicated on being a citizen of a rich country in which material superabundance has been achieved -- which will be under increasing pressure as other countries strive for the same. You and I disagree little, if at all (this applies to your entire post, not just the highlight).

Cheers,

R.

I'll try not to have it happen again 😉