Flock's automatic license plate reader (ALPR) cameras are in more than 5,000 communities around the U.S. Local police are doing lookups in the nationwide system for ICE.
In 2003 a friend and I were brainstorming what the next big disruptive tech would be and how we might get investment to start a company based on it. My conclusion at the time: cheap digital cameras. 22 years ago they were already cheap and high resolution enough to kill the film camera industry, and they’ve only continued on through today with color night vision, etc.
He did finally get investment and start his own company: automating regulatory paperwork for small companies that would be swamped in it without help.
Meanwhile, networked cameras are approaching “smartdust” levels of ubiquity. It’s like living around the time of Gutenberg and seeing the world relatively smothered in printed text leaflets, hundreds of times as many pages of text in less time and for lower cost than scribes. The changes have only just begun, and people aren’t really aware of how fundamentally life has changed as a result.
In 2003 a friend and I were brainstorming what the next big disruptive tech would be and how we might get investment to start a company based on it. My conclusion at the time: cheap digital cameras. 22 years ago they were already cheap and high resolution enough to kill the film camera industry, and they’ve only continued on through today with color night vision, etc.
He did finally get investment and start his own company: automating regulatory paperwork for small companies that would be swamped in it without help.
Meanwhile, networked cameras are approaching “smartdust” levels of ubiquity. It’s like living around the time of Gutenberg and seeing the world relatively smothered in printed text leaflets, hundreds of times as many pages of text in less time and for lower cost than scribes. The changes have only just begun, and people aren’t really aware of how fundamentally life has changed as a result.