Emerging technology for a la carte bodies, faces, will gird Deconstructionist power bid

UPDATED: Newsday reports CBS-TV's incoming evening news anchor Katie Couric lost about 20 pounds...in the Photoshop. A network promotional magazine titled Watch! recently carried a digitally-altered photo of a very slimmed-down Couric. Compared to real life, that is.

Here's the real Katie in a May network promo photo distributed to the media (left), and the computer-skinnified Couric shot used in the CBS magazine (right).

Watch! has a circulation of 400,000, and is distributed on American Airlines flights and at CBS stations. So fauxtography not only brings us bigger, smokier explosions in Lebanon, but smaller, more narrow-waisted network anchors. Me, I just shade my digipix a bit if the sun was too bright, maybe dial up the sharpness a smidge, or crop bland edges. If I want to really have some fun I might turn Mount Rainier a bit purple or blue. But that's it. I use Apple iPhoto and if there's a doctoring capability, as there is with Adobe's Photoshop, I haven't discovered it yet.

As noted in the eponymous link above, fauxtography - unspoken and fraudulent image additions to a digital photo, and overt staging of war or disaster photos for political effect - poses yet another serious credibility issue for the mainstream media. But the personal will trump the political in the end.

Ethical concerns will eventually be subsumed as it becomes clear that other types of "real" image transmissions will frequently be doctored, too. The little Couric dust-up is instructive, actually. In time, most television and video cameras in use will have built-in controls allowing instant slimming, erasure of crow's feet, and so forth. After-the-fact alterations of photos done now with software will be done live during broadcast. Just dial in the "20 pounds slimmer, 20 years younger" pre-set. Or "full head of hair." It will be a Godsend to aging anchors, and actors. More comprehensive options will come to include a full range of facial and body types. The live-cam will become a transformational tool.

Subsequently there will be mass-market deployment of invisible image transmitter shields that all people will be able to wear, achieving the same sort of visual makeover in everyday life. Wafer thin, pinky-fingernail-sized chips plugged into the invisible image transmitter shields will deliver various ethnic facial features, body types and even celebrity look-alike packages. Amazon.com will corner the market; sales will dwarf all other online retail combined. Skin cream hawkers and liposuctionists will become obsolete; but beauty magazines will adapt swiftly with slavish hype.

The dramatic third-stage breakthrough, not long afterward, will allow the "feel" of the menu-selected facial and body images to match the look. Dating and sex will be greatly enhanced. Health club membership and exercise will decline dramatically in popularity, rejected by all but the most principled purists.

At that point the deconstructionists will have finally won. No one will even care whether Reuters has doctored "news" photos from Lebanon, or North Korea, or Iran. All "realities" will be seen as manufactured.

You read it first at Rosenblog.

TECHNORATI TAGS: CBS-TV, KATIE COURIC, PHOTO, FAUXTOGRAPHY, REUTERS, LEBANON, PHOTOSHOP, iPHOTO, VIRTUAL REALITY, DECONSTRUCTIONISM