Simon Tanner of King's College London gives a presentation on the future of high resolution images using JPEG2000 and uses the Dr Who TARDIS as a thematic idea as the TARDIS is bigger on the inside than the outside (just like a JPEG2000 image). Given at Current Trends and Future Directions for Digital Imaging in Libraries and Archives 10/11/2014, Wellcome Trust - London http://www.dpconline.org/events/details/83-JP2000

1. A Glance at the Future –
the Image as Dr Who’s TARDIS
Simon Tanner
Director of Digital Consulting
Department of Digital Humanities, King’s College London
Twitter: @SimonTanner
11/11/2014 11:27 ENC Public Talk 19 February 2013 1

2. Digital Humanities:
www.kcl.ac.uk/ddh/
the application of digital technology to humanities disciplines
reflection upon the impact of digital media upon humanity
> 50 academics & researchers
~ £2.5 million research income per annum
>5 million digital objects, 130+projects: mostly JPEG2000
200+million hits over 5 years: 2009-2013

3. A Glance at the Future
“Trying to predict the future is a mug's game. But increasingly it's a
game we all have to play because the world is changing so fast and
we need to have some sort of idea of what the future's actually going
to be like because we are going to have to live there, probably next
week.”
Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt
“ things can change so abruptly, so violently, so profoundly, that
futures like our grandparents’ have insufficient ‘now’ to stand on. We
have no future because our present is too volatile. We have only... the
spinning of the given moment's scenarios. Pattern recognition.”
William Gibson, Pattern Recognition

4. © BBC

5. Needs becoming clearer
The ever increasing spatial, spectral and temporal resolution of
remotely sensed imagery data sets means that fast decompression
of remote sensed data is very important.
The ever increasing volume of digitised content to be stored,
managed and curated means that compression is essential to
sustainability.
Medical, biometric and defence applications are driving significant
innovation.
An increasing demand from image consumers for sophisticated
interfaces with high resolution or high performance imagery.

6. Things less clear
Wholesale adoption in face of entrenched
market positions?
Ability to become a simpler format to use – especially
regarding compression decisions?
Ability to serve all interface technologies?
Ability to serve non-high bit rate
IP networks?
Error resilience?
Scalability, scalability, scalability?

7. Opposing tensions?
“we live with a rate of change so high, that if you understand
something today that means it must already, by definition, be
obsolete.
James Burke, Connections, Episode 10,
"Yesterday, Tomorrow and You“
“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from
magic.”
Arthur C Clarke, Hazards of Prophecy:
The Failure of Imagination

8. Think inside
the box!
because it’s bigger
on the inside
Simon Tanner
Director of Digital Consulting
Department of Digital Humanities, King’s College London
Twitter: @SimonTanner
11/11/2014 11:27 ENC Public Talk 19 February 2013 8