Kodak Fiends

Our first taste of the privacy debate came in 1890, two years after the release of the Kodak portable camera. Freed from the studio a camera could now roam at large and photograph anybody, and so this was not only a technical innovation but a public one, certainly in the case of the press, which boomed as a result. Paranoia inevitably set in, but at the same time the photographic revolution was good for business and the improvements in photographic technology were a part of the popularity of newspapers and other publications in the era.

As well as making full use of the photographs created by the new technology, The New York Times still reported in 1899 that ‘Kodak fiends’ were harassing the ladies of Newport and stories from the same period also recall how President Roosevelt was so self-conscious when it came to being Kodaked that he even briefly managed to outlaw Kodaks in Washington Parks.

If the portable camera was the fear at the turn of the twentieth century and the printing press was the fear in the sixteenth century, then the Internet and our increasingly effective data storage have bounced us off the same wall today. Considering the new technology, we might argue that such surveillance is an inescapable aspect of our own innovations. An electoral register for example, is a pre-requisite of a system that relies on people’s individual votes to operate. Likewise if consumer demands are to be met in terms of a wide range of products and services then high levels of surveillance are probably necessary to ensure that demands are met in good order and on time. By this measure, surveillance increases human individuality, and does not erode it.