"At the core of our products is the revolutionary Foveon X3® direct image sensor, the world's first image sensor that directly captures color using three layers of pixels," says Foveon (© 2004 Klaus Rademaker photo using the technology), but "the application of its technology to cameras has turned out to have a lot of rough patches. The first consumer-grade camera employing Foveon technology was recalled last month for poor image quality," cautions Glenn Reynolds. Too bad. It would have been great for capturing moments in the secret life of land snails.
"Nothing in Foveon's history turns out as planned and that, perhaps, is the real story," writes Glenn Harlan Reynolds in an Opinion Journal review of George Gilder's The Silicon Eye, "the history of Foveon, the ground-breaking digital imaging company":
Like Foveon's founders, Mr. Gilder wants to understand vision, albeit of a different kind: the vision of innovators.
His book is the latest in the genre of true-life techno-capitalist thrillers that started with Tracy Kidder's "The Soul of a New Machine" (1981). But where Mr. Kidder's story revolved around personalities, Mr. Gilder's revolves around the unpredictability of markets and competition. Yes, there is something self-absolving about that but also something very, very true.
But after all, capitalism is about surprises. As the writer and engineer Samuel Florman noted years ago, those who argue that Big Business dictates consumer tastes and purchases through advertising and market power have to explain the Edsel . . . When you combine the unpredictability of technology with the unpredictability of consumers, you wind up with an environment that is, well, really unpredictable. And the results are often fatal (to companies) and fortuitous (to consumers and society).
Foveon may succeed or fail, adds Reynolds:
But by its mere existence, as Mr. Gilder reports, it's pressuring digital-camera makers to push existing technology much further -- toward compactness and high resolution, for example . . . The unpredictable disorder of markets is, in Microsoft parlance, not a bug but a feature.
Very clever of Opinion Journal to choose libertarian Renaissance Man Reynolds as book reviewer, but how come no recognition of his "secret" life as InstaPundit?
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