It’s fascinating how many technologies were developed first for military use, before finding it’s way into the commercial space! This was the first time I’ve heard of computer vision originating from military origins, but I knew that the Internet was first invented for war-time communications, and super-glue was an accidental invention from other military-based research. Those inventions that were first made for something as violent as harm has eventually settled down and turned into technologies that we use in our everyday lives, and even in art.
I still think it’s funny how some tasks that are so simple for humans are extremely difficult problems in computation, and some tasks that are nigh-impossible for humans is easy for computers. Computers can calculate 3 to the power of 100 almost instantly, a task that no sane human can do. In the case of computer vision, any human can identify a pigeon in a picture, yet it took computers decades of research before it started being able to identify objects well.
I also found it interesting how many of the early applications of computer vision in projects has a theme of surveillance around it, and I think it reflects how the scene viewed cameras at the time — tools of surveillance. Standards and Double Standards and Suicide Box both use computer vision to highlight societal observations through the lens of an array of pixels.