In 1975, a young Kodak engineer built the first digital camera in history. His name was Steven Sasson. It was experimental. It shot black-and-white images at 0.01 megapixels and took 23 seconds to save them to a cassette. But it worked.
When he presented it to executives, their response was clear: no one will ever use this. Too slow. Too futuristic. And above all, if it works, it kills our business. Kodak was making billions selling film. If people could take photos without film, it would all be over.
So what did they do? They shelved it, locked it away, and hoped it would disappear.
In the 1990s, while the digital world exploded, Kodak kept investing in printing, in photo paper, in chemistry. They resisted. Pretended not to see. Until 2012, when they went bankrupt. The company that held the future in its hands chose to ignore it.
We’re doing the same today. Companies, schools, institutions. Faced with AI, with the transformation of work, with automated systems that are rewriting everything, the risk isn’t that we don’t understand them. It’s that we choose not to.
The problem isn’t technology. It’s those who refuse to use it to avoid losing power.
And meanwhile, they blame workers for not updating their skills, young people for not adapting, seniors for not understanding. But the real mistake is strategic — from the top. Like back then. Kodak didn’t die because of digital. It died of arrogance.
Are we unprepared? No. We don’t want to be.
And that’s far worse.
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Marco Camisani Calzolari
marcocamisanicalzolari.com/biography