They are here, there, everywhere ! Things are moving so fast most people can't comprehend it.

How long have you had a digital camera? How long have you had a PC? When did you first here about people colour calibrating monitors and printers?

It is easy to look back at history time lines and get the impression that lots of things were happening when actually the dates are sometimes decades apart.

Today people are taking more photographs in more places than ever and there are still animal species living on Earth that have never been photographed in all their life stages. How many nature programs have you seen you using innovative photography to capture moments and species that have never been seen before. They are using remote and sometimes minute cameras.
Sheila mentioned small above in the medical field - lots going on there. Nano technology will bring amazing photographs of sights we can only imagine.
How many news photographs do you see now that come from the man in the street with a mobile phone - could you have imagined that 20 yrs ago?

Yep the commercial side will be developing digital to be better more pixels and memory etc etc etc but the leading edge is way beyond that.

Further into the future:
Computers are held back by silicon chips there are inherent problems that mean new solutions have to be found and are being worked on. Silicon chips are very wasteful in energy but much worse is the time taken for electricity to travel their circuits which limits the size of the circuits. Already a problem today!

New technology there will allow advances in other fields: Photographs that work with more of the senses perhaps. Photographs that give you the actual experience of the situation.

Yep there are innovators about, and things are moving very fast.

Message edited on: 01/15/2006 03:43

And every one said, 'If we only live,
We too will go to sea in a Sieve,---
To the hills of the Chankly Bore!'
Far and few, far and few, Are the lands where the Jumblies live;
Their heads are green, and their hands are blue, And they went to sea in a Sieve.

Edward Lear
http://www.nonsenselit.org/Lear/ns/jumblies.html