Digital cameras continue to boom
“NYT” story by Katie Hafner.

“This year, according to Infotrends, a market research firm in Boston, some 9.5 million digital cameras will be sold in the United States, compared with 15 million film cameras (disposable cameras are not included). In five years, the number of digital cameras sold is expected to double as the sale of film cameras declines. “

[…]

Those crossing over to digital are beginning to use cameras in ways they would not have considered with film. One of the biggest changes is the end result: just 12 percent of digital photos are ever printed, Mr. Pageau said. And that fact has altered the practice of compulsively organizing pictures into albums [~] or stashing them in shoe boxes.

“We’re beginning to take pictures not to keep them around, but to reach out and touch someone with them, to extend the moment, that sense of presence,” said John Seely Brown, the recently retired chief scientist at the Xerox Corporation and author of “The Social Life of Information.”

Dr. Brown cited the increasing practice of sending photos by e-mail as an example. “There’s a sense of using this to connect in the moment to someone else I want to touch,” he said. “I’m more concerned about getting it to them and touching them than in having a photograph I can put in an album.”