It was probably sometime in 1992 when I heard Wally Axford describing the lens-less camera of the future. It was in the Photo Science labs in the basement of Riding House Street and, I think, during an extended image processing practical session with an Acorn Archimedes something or other. Wally's theory was that the future camera would just be a GPS device. All you needed to know was where you were.
It would generate the perfect picture by composing something from a combination of stock imagery for where you were with the curated images of the people you were with. His theory was that a) most people couldn't capture a great landscape photo, b) most people didn't like most pictures of themselves, and c) no one cares really about the actual picture, more it's the memory it evokes or the message it sends.
At the time there was some Kodak research floating around that the most common photo was granny in front of a bin in the garden. So Wally's idea would give you the best photo of granny with the best bits of the garden (without the bins, or a telegraph pole sticking out of grannies head).
Tech went in a different direction, with computational cameras in every pocket. But I can't help wondering if the highly curated feeds on facebook, insta or wherever are telling us that we'd be better off with something closer to Wally's vision.
But then there's deep fakes, which is pretty much exactly what Wally envisioned. Except they've not (yet) reinvented and replaced the camera.