“Kodak’s film was so bad at capturing the different hues and saturations of black skin that when director Jean Luc Godard was sent on an assignment to Mozambique in 1977, he flat-out refused to use Kodak on the grounds that its stock was “racist.” Only when the candy and furniture industries began complaining that they couldn’t accurately shoot dark chocolate and brown wood furniture did Kodak start to improve its technology.”
—
The Quiet Racism of Instagram Filters (via rrruinous)
The fact that racism is literally built into the technology itself is just strangely mindblowing to me. Not surprising, mind you, just mindblowing. It takes things to a whole new level of talking about bias. Even before you get into the politics of who is taking what picture for what reasons, the very technology itself is already biased.
(via sofriel)
if you want a different and another current example of racism embedded in technology, check out this article on unicode (how languages are produced on screen)
Published
mysong5 