Technologies of Seeing: Photography, Cinematography and Television

Why is the cinema 100 years old, and not 120 or 150 years old? Why do Kodak film stocks have such trouble capturing non-Caucasian skin tones? Why is high definition analog television not in every home sixteen years after it was introduced? Why did professionals wait thirty years and more before widely adopting 16mm film?
Technologies of Seeing offers an analysis of the complex forces pushing and constraining technological developments like these. In the dominant view, technological advance is the simple result of scientific progress. This book contests that view, detailing the ways in which social forces control the media technology agenda at every stage: social necessities push developments, social constraints suppress their disruptive power.