[aeturnum]

> Photography isn’t racist, it’s physical limitations that come into play.

I wanna pull this apart a bit because I think it's a good opportunity to talk about how systemic bias gets started. Digital sensor evolution is path-dependent. Technologists developed photo-sites that have "enough" dynamic range for most uses before moving on to increase the resolution on a sensor. What exactly is "enough" depends on your test data.

The sensor on a webcam is only "so big" as you say - but how that sensor balances resolution and photo-site count depends on what conditions they consider acceptable. We could build web cams that would see more pigmented faces better - there is no fundamental limitation in the technology itself. It's that a series of decisions have been made over years of development, generally without people thinking specifically about race at all, and we've arrived at a status quo that has adverse outcomes for people with different skin tones.

There was a similar process that happened with film photography[1]. Not that film, as a technology, is unable to capture dark skin - but that the development standards that were tested and distributed were designed for lighter skin.

Like, I agree that the webcams we have aren't intentionally 'racist.' But I do think that the status quo that has led everyone to accept this balance of dynamic range and resolution is reflective of valuing people with lighter skin more.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/25/lens/sarah-lewis-racial-b...

[MengerSponge]

A closely related story that will also resonate with you: early microphones were tuned for male voices, which led to truly a lot of harm to women. It's just a matter of physics, as people are fond of saying. Mediocre technologists make mediocre products that were only validated for people like them.

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/a-century...