Everything looks worse in black and white

By now it’s old news that Kodak filed for bankruptcy protection this year, but the new news is that the company will no longer make cameras. Some 130 years ago, Kodak, founded by George Eastman, invented the hand-held camera — it was their baby — and today the company is putting that baby to bed.

Most people in the know say that the company didn’t keep up with the times; it didn’t move into the digital age quickly enough. It let other companies stand on its shoulders and then push it out of the way. Kodak used to own the industry. Years ago, who didn’t buy Kodak film? And remember what an advancement it was to have film engineered to work better outdoors or in low light?

Attention must be paid because the disappearance of Kodak’s camera business is proof of the adage, Keep up or step aside. The world changed around the company, but the people at Kodak were still in the Brownie box-camera era.

Kodak is a victim of progress and slow business thinking, but more than that, it became obsolete in a time when the nature of human experience shifted dramatically and forever. Have you noticed?

I visited a zoo recently, and the indoor reptile exhibit was crowded with children and their parents. No one was actually looking at the reticulated python or the exotic red-toed Costa Rican tree frog. Everyone was pointing their smartphone cameras at the displays, clicking away. I realized that for most of the people there, the experience was altered from the way it was just a few years ago. They didn’t really look at the animals. They certainly didn’t read the descriptions posted on the glass enclosures, describing the habitat and behavior of the reptiles. They took pictures with their phones, as if capturing the image at that moment meant everything.

But they missed the main event. They missed putting their eyes on the snake as it writhed behind the glass. They didn’t see the twitching in the frog’s hind leg. In fact, they missed the moment while trying to preserve it.