An Engineer / Not a Camera

2025 12 min

The computer microchip is the most complex mass-produced device in human history. A critical step in fabricating this technology shaping the future is photolithography, a process that stems directly from the development of photography and optical principles dating back centuries. Today, cutting-edge microchips have allowed computer-generated imagery to pass virtually indistinguishable from that of a camera. Once a method for capturing an image of the world, light and optics are now being used to build machines that make images of the world without needing to see it. As this new image world grows richer, the danger of falling into a virtual elsewhere grows with it. Yet there is no elsewhere. Every image from an uncanny world somewhere else fundamentally alters our world right before our eyes.