The Eyes Have It—Evolution of the Ontology of Machine Vision

Abstract

Since the twentieth century, machine visions have developed rapidly in the scientific and military fields, and the world has been condensed into an all-seeing picture. In today’s world of networked communication technology, such machine vision has expanded dramatically, and its image archives have now become the world itself. The new machine vision clearly represents a new kind of media ecology, but it is also arguably the new visual problem of our time. In the deep entanglement of image, capital, and power, reality disappears, and humanity is redefined. This paper lists for kinds of eyes: Kino-eye, Robo-eye, Flying-eye, and A-eye, in order to examine the evolution of the subjectivity of visual machines from 20th century to nowadays exploring the contemporary situation of machine vision as a visual culture today and its context.