Given how important sight is to humans in regards to navigating and interacting with the world around us, granting similar abilities to a machine is a fascinating concept. Of course, it introduces just as many technical issues as it does opportunities, and what little I do know about computer vision/graphics is that it gets complicated very quickly. That aspect also shows just how impressive the human body is, since it takes huge amounts of work to create even a basic emulation of what comes naturally to us. The examples mentioned in the reading (frame differencing, background subtraction, and brightness thresholding) seem somewhat straightforward, but they each rely on very specific criteria to achieve their purposes.
There were a number of points made throughout the reading that stood out to me. For one, the beginning of the text mentions that most early applications of computer vision were military in nature, due to the prohibitive nature of the field at the time. While the technology is now more available than ever, the potential for misuse is also just as high. This has been seen in more general cases in the past few years like AirTag stalking, Zoombombing, etc. Computer vision is a particularly bad case given how cameras are literally everywhere nowadays, ready to collect PII or otherwise violate our privacy. A less concerning point I liked was how in order to optimize the digital performance of computer vision, you have to provide the right physical environment for it to work in. While it is rather obvious when you think about the requirements and constraints each technique has, I appreciated the duality of the process and allusion to how “two in harmony surpasses one in perfection.”