To own a digital camera at the end of the 1990’s was pretty unusual and expensive. Ten years later almost every gadget seems to be able to shot photos and videos – even in High-Definition …

Cheap Sensors

The arrival of cheap sensors and storage allowed cell phone and computer manufacturer to stuff a camera into almost every gadget we carry around. There are hardly any cell phones or notebooks without a cam these days.

And the Quality! There was literally an explosion of pixel power – who would today bother with a 1-Mega-Pixel-Camera? Sure pixel resolution is not everything, but the image quality has equally improved with pixel quantity.

Early Nokia prototypes …

Cheap Monitors

But the Revolution of the Pixel includes LCD monitors – which are now huge and cheap (my current 24"-Samsung-Display would have been astronomically expensive in 1999). The analogue monitor is dead – LCDs have overtaken our eyes. Their sharpness and extreme colour range has redefined our viewing habits.

Cheap Storage and Bandwidth

Big sensor create big images – but today we also have the CHEAP big memory cards, sticks and chips to store them – as well as fast broadband to send our crappy holiday shots to all our friends and social media appendices via eMail or Social Media website (like Flickr and Facebook).

The Real Changes: record anything everywhere and at anytime

Because not only Big Brother has CCTV cameras everywhere we mere mortals can and do record anything. Thanks to YouTube and Flickr (and their clones) we can and do share everything we record.

In the last ten years there has been a flood of digital videos and photos. I suspect we all shot more images and hours of footage in these last ten years with our cheap gadgets than all generations before us?!

And the pixelated flood will continue.

On the web you can videos of any occasion and situation: from airplanes crashes, terrorist attacks, amateur sex and children’s birthdays. It alls there.

I wonder how he feels about that (public) video in twenty years?

The new global sharing culture enables us to share our lives with others and see how others live their life’s. It has never been so easy to experience, study and learn the human condition.

Since we love Social Porn (<- see my essay on that subject here) this trend will continue. It’s not Big Brother watching us – we love to show ourselves and watch others. This was first limited to celebrities and personal holiday snapshots. Today we can record and broadcast our own lives 24/7 – and some people already do.

That also means that social acceptance of being watched by the government and others has risen. In a world were everybody can record, share and watch everyone the old idea of privacy is gone …

We all know what you did ten summers ago … and you will never be able to delete that image …

The Real Changes: the Web never forgets and will find you

The global visual sharing culture has just begun, already billions of images and videos are online. And the web never forgets …

In the last century your parents were probably the keepers and guardians of your embarrassing childhood shots – today compromising material will sooner or later land on the web.

Many employers as well as "friends" check on Facebook and other social media your history before they get closer.

Thanks to Geo-Tagging and Facial Recognition it will be much easier to find a specific person in a gazillion images and videos. There is no such thing as anonymity in this brave new pixel world.

Reality – captured from many slightly different perspectives. 

The Real Changes: the global Big Picture and Synthesized Reality

Soon there won’t  be a place that hasn’t been photographed or captured in video. We will have a complete visual memory of our planet.

But there is more: all these images and technology will not only allow us to "find" each other – it will allow us to merge all that huge image and video pool into synthesized memory spaces (<- read my essay here).

Smart software literally stitches photos into a 3D-environment and connect / compute additional information into that "space".

When you think that Google Streetview and Google Earth are pretty amazing than hold on to your socks – the new kind of search will finally feel like stranger than any science fiction movie you have seen …

Is it real or is it … HDR?

The Real Changes: Reality is not as good as High-Definition

The last ten years have also brought a different change: the way we perceive what "reality" should look like.

Cameras, monitors and videos have slowly changed from the old 4:3 format to 16:9. The future is no longer square, but widescreen …

But the sharpness, colour range and contrast of images has changed dramatically, best illustrated by so called HDR-Images.

Before and after the HDR treatment …

Similar to before mentioned synthesized memory spaces already available cameras can combine several shots into one "High dynamic range image" that looks more real than reality.

Before the arrival of digital tools (read Photoshop or Paint Boxes for professional TV and Film productions) it was very hard to manipulate images.

Today almost any cheap camera or cell phone cam offers "image improvement filters" ranging from simple red eye removal to face finders and even body slimmers.

All these technologies have changed our perception of reality: old black & white television was unreal, even analogue colour TV looks unreal to a certain degree – and so do "classic" photos.

But today’s image technology allows us to create images and videos that look and feel more real than reality, but catching and synthesizing more details, sharpness and speed than ever before.

Remember him? 

The Real Changes: The Decade of Photoshop Fakery and empty Movies with too much CGI

The last ten years saw the Perfection of Fakery – thanks to tools like Photoshop, After Effects and many other image manipulation tools.

Movies like Jurassic Park and Matrix paved the way for CGI in movies – and helped the directors to tell amazing tales. But today many movies and TV shows feel boring, because there are too many "amazing effects". Special effects have turned into a big bore …

But Photoshop & Co are now also the #1 toys for Fakery – from Beauty Magazines and Advertising to Viral Videos – Fakes are now everywhere.

Every time people see today an amazing photo or video they distrust what they see: "Is it photoshopped or is it real?!"

Fakery is increasingly hard to spot and image manipulation is now standard for almost anything you see printed or on TV.

Especially advertising was always about fake reality, but now that advertised reality looks absolutely real and can be even more beautiful than ever before. Especially woman still try to "achieve" the beauty standards in advertising – but these fake beauties are unreal and do not exist … their "level of beauty" can never be reached by any real person …

LonelyGirl15 – the first YouTube Superstar? 

The Real Changes: Democratization of Broadcasting

When 8 mm movies came out it was touted as the Hollywood revolution for everyone. But the technology was cumbersome, expensive and difficult to master.

Today a GOOD video camera is affordable even for amateurs and the quality is amazing. Editing and special effects software is also cheap and basically the same the real Pros in Hollywood use.

But most of all there is now a global and cheap way to show and distribute your videos: the web.

New talent and film students can create movies and no longer rely on movie theatres, Hollywood studios or TV broadcasters to bring their work to the masses.

That means there is a wider platform for artists, moviemakers and crap alike – but it is most of all a true democratization of moviemaking and broadcasting like never before.

Low Budget series like LonelyGirl15 became global brands / phenomenon’s. Becoming a superstar on a budget was no possible!

Hello Human! Do you know where are you going to?

The Real Changes: 3D-Environments and Augmented Reality will change how we deal with real life

Today we are quite used to "live" in 3D spaces, either in games or car navigation systems – not too mention Google Earth …

The visuals of Computer Games have made a huge leap forward in the last 10 years. The X-Box, Playstation 2 and Wii can deliver incredible visuals.

Games have been pushing simulated 3D worlds for now over 20 years. New games look incredibly realistic and have left it’s visually primitive forefather Pong far behind.

But 3D engines, geo-tagging, camera sensors and search engines will merge into a new technology called Augmented Reality.

Here you look at the world through a computer display – and the computer will analyze what you and it sees – and add additional information.

The simplest form of this technology have been car navigation systems, but newer versions will go much further.

This is just a simply version of AR …

They could tell you for example which people or businesses are in a building nearby, because a search engine show you all information regarding the location you are currently at – and also know thanks to other peoples computers and cell phones who is currently near that exact spot you are standing.

Like other technologies this will make us even more dependent on our little gizmos. The pocket calculator robbed us of the need to learn math. The cell phone is our external memory for phone numbers, addresses and even our schedule (be honest how many phone numbers can you remember?).

Augmented Play Time …

Most people could hardly read maps anyway, but Augmented Reality will make them totally dependent on where to go. And thanks to "smart software" it will tell them what to shop where and that the person in front of them is their wife …

Conclusion: a new form of Telepresence

We are developing a totally new visual culture. Once the invention of photography radically changed how we captured reality and made it permanent – so will the digital capture, global storage and synthesizing of photos and videos.

Everybody needs a cam like this and everybody will wear some form of camera in the future anyway …

Thanks to a coming 24/7 always-on camera capture we will also develop a new form of Telepresence we have developed in the last century: first there was the telegraph that allowed almost instant reporting of events far away. Then came the telephone and radio, which allowed us to hear live events far away. With television we suddenly had eyes and ears all over the globe. We could watch catastrophes and music concerts unfold live.

A global web connected camera network will allow us to watch anything everywhere. It is not just a network for "watching" – it also will record, store and cross connect everything it sees.

The new telepresence and visual network will let you watch such events even from "unrecorded" angles …

This global camera network is not like Big Brother – it is a decentralized sister network, which consists of millions of independent digital eyes and ears that record and record …

Like a computer game all that data can be used to replay and synthesize the events it captured.

The Thick of it is one of my favourite shows – it’s deeply cynical and a great satire about political dealings. It based on the British Labour Government under Tony Blair – but it could be any modern Government.

It’s all about spin doctors, power grabbing and back stabbing, while trying to score points with the public and being politically correct …

It follows the British tradition of such great shows like Yes Minister, Yes Prime Minister and The New Statesman.

Season 3 just finished and I can’t wait for another one. There is also a movie called In the Loop featuring almost the same cast of actors albeit playing a bit different characters.

Highly recommended for people who love politics and satire.

Hardest working Media Slut of the Noughties: Katie Price.

The insight that “Sex sells” is hardly a new one – and blonde sluts selling particularly well is also not a new invention.

But Blonde was the ruling colour in Entertainment and our Celebrity obsessed culture.

And nobody personified this better than Paris Hilton. Already rich she simply hungered for fame and glory. In the case of Katie Price and many of her modified sisters I can understand the motivation: they wanted to make money with their blondness – but Paris already had all that already …

But there was something new: Media Whoring developed into a new form – Web Sluttism (my other essay on the very same topic can be found here “Princess Salome and her modern Web 2.0 Sisters“).

The Celebrity Obsession found a much better soil to grow on and accelerate to new insane heights. “Leaked” sex tape and naughty photos on the net (read YouTube) allowed unknown starlets to become world wide brands within 24 hours.

Websites like TMZ and Bloggers like Perez Hilton became the new News Channels and pushed classical mainstream media aside. Media Whores like Paris or the Cutchers could also build their audiences via Twitter and Facebook.

Thanks to new technology we could track, watch and talk about (and with celebrities) 24/7. Their lives became our lives …

Carrie gave Dumbness a bad name …

Suddenly we mere mortals could be “friends” with our Alpha-Males & Females. Social Porn (read also my essay “Why do we love to watch Social Porn on TV?“) became a much stronger and intimate part of our lives – we were “connected” with the stars and could “talk” with them …

Death is just the beginning for some …

But nobody epitomized our Celebrity Obsession like the life and death of Michael Jackson. From his downfall, ruin and trial to his sudden death … the whole globe was watching and going mad with hysteria.

Jacko is now a modern God – his fans worship him like one and I wonder if this madness will increase the longer he is dead?!

Michael Jackson might well be our first Cradle-2-Grave-Celebrity – who’s first and last steps have been documented without mercy for the real person behind the surgery.

While the West celebrated in the late 1990’s the End of History and all old evils like religion – the Middle East wasn’t there yet.

Compared to 1999 we know much more about Arabs and Islam … the West has spent almost a decade trying to understand and formulate an answer to bloody terrorism, the emergence of Islam and the growing influence of Arab countries …

Not only 9/11 and terrorism have changed the West’s view on Islam and the Middle East  -  Islam is simply the fastest growing religion world wide and Arab countries are demanding more power in the world as well.

Iran and Saudi Arabia are the winners of this decade in terms of political power and money. Both made huge sums of money from the explosion of oil prices. And both countries used the money to further their influences all over the world.

Yeah, yeah we get it: Death to all! Bla bla bla …

Saudi Arabia was much quieter, but also funded dubious religious and political groups all over the world. Iran was hard to overlook – all the tantrums and threats were not always unjustified (look here and here). But overall Iran tries way to hard to flex it’s muscles and provoke a confrontation with almost anyone …

In Europe Islam and the so called clash of cultures is causing many problems: the Assassination of Theo van Gogh in 2004, home grown terrorists in Spain (Madrid in 2004) and Britain (London Bombings in 2005). Muslim extremism was not just limited to the Middle East. But there is also a backlash in Europe: the Mohammad Cartoons in Denmark (2005) and the most recent Minaret Ban in Switzerland (2009).

Europe grants Freedom for Religions as well as Freedom from Religious Oppressions! Got it?

Europe still has a hard time to cope with madness of (any) religion – something it thought it had left behind in the last millennium …

1. The Middle East is still backwards – but it needs to evolve fast. The detailed UN report about the region from 2002 still is valid and only little has changed: Governance is still bad – most countries are still ruled by tyrants and not popular vote (and even when they vote it’s a sham like in Iran or Afghanistan).
2. No alternative to Oil: most Arab countries don’t have any serious industries or export articles apart from Oil (and sometimes tourism). Unemployment rates are astronomical and causes unrest in the overall very young population.
3. Poverty and Inequality: Although the Middle East seems awash with money there is also still terrible poverty in the region. Minorities and women are still treated badly.

Let’s hope the Middle East will transform itself – and let’s also hope that Islam will have a “modern” reformation like Christianity or hopefully looses it’s bloody influence …

On the 24th of December 1979 the first Ariane rocket took off from the French Guyane Space Centre.

It is one of the greatest space programs so far with a 190 successful launches and only 9 failures.

Yes, Europe can tackle big projects and be a top player in high tech.

Let’s hope that the Brits (who finally get their own Space Agency just recently to replace the old one) rejoin Ariane soon.

No I don’t celebrate "Weihnachten" nor do I care about the religion or consumerism behind it. But I like the Winter Solstice – good to know that the sun is reborn (and not the Son is Born).

But it is a great time to be charitable and reflect on your own fortunes. If you can read this you …

1. have an education
2. have a roof over your head
3. some spare time (you are not working right now)
4. money to afford electricity
5. a computer
6. and broadband

So you are pretty rich compared to billions of other less fortunate fellow humans.

No need to fake humility or consternation – enjoy and celebrate that you are so lucky and that you can indulge so many luxuries of life!

So it’s over – we are all doomed!

At least when you believe the international outcry over the failure of the Climate Conference in Copenhagen. Especially the Green Movement cried foul especially loud.

Gimme a break!

Anyone who seriously follow international politics knows that it is VERY hard to many countries to agree to a BINDING new international law. It is almost IMPOSSIBLE to get ALL countries to agree to a solution for such a complex problem.

So instead of a lot of public pressure and hysteria some smart diplomacy and solutions should have been produced – especially by the Green Movement.

Instead of one binding law / goal for all there should have been different levels of commitment: stricter ones for rich countries, who can afford to do more – and maybe more generic "gentler" ones for developing and poor nations.

Climate Change won’t be solved by one master plan – as exciting and mind pleasing that idea is. Instead we need to have many solutions and approaches to the problem.

One more thing: the bashing of the politicians was especially surreal and stupid.

They only acted based on the interested of their countries and economies. So they only reflected the greed and laziness of their people.

Neither Obama nor Wen Jiabao are responsible for the pollution and waste their countries create – it’s the millions of citizens that want to drive cars, eat loads of food and consume the newest goods. Just because the Chinese are not as rich as Americans doesn’t mean they wouldn’t be just as wasteful and greedy.

We are genetically programmed to want MORE of everything, because only the abundance and security of good supplies guarantees our offspring’s future and perpetuation of our DNA. We are built to deal with "modest" times – but we prefer plentifulness.

Unless consumers are truly willing to consume less or/and smarter, than climate change can be reversed. At the moment we need to reduce consume and invent new  sustainable ways of living. We are not there yet – so only a smarter handling of resources will work.

So Climate Change protest groups should create local groups and "harass" … I mean visit local people and "help" them to live greener.

Don’t ask politicians to "regulate" a greener lifestyle, because any limits set by them will create only sentiments against doing anything to prevent climate change. And politicians won’t pass the chance to "abuse" climate change laws to sneak in their own dirty deals.