SNAP INC, 2018

When Snap Inc. declared itself a camera company in 2016, it was making a claim that cameras were no longer passive tools for capturing reality, but active agents in how we perceive, share, and construct it.

The digital landscape was shifting from text as the primary mode of interaction to a more visual-first paradigm. Instagram had reshaped self-expression, FaceTime had normalized face-to-face digital communication, and augmented reality (AR) was shifting from science fiction to consumer tech (evidenced by Pokémon Go’s viral 2016 moment).

This shift has deep historical roots. From Kodak’s Brownie camera in 1900 democratizing photography, to the 1980s camcorder boom, to the iPhone putting a high-quality lens in every pocket, cameras have always shaped cultural perception. Each era’s dominant medium shapes how people understand themselves and the world: print enabled the novel, radio created mass broadcast, television produced a collective visual memory. With the internet, and particularly the smartphone, the camera became more than a tool of documentation; it evolved into a portal for communication and interpretation.

Snap’s focus on advanced lenses, real-time filters, and camera-based interaction is a bet on the camera as the future’s main interface — not just for capturing images, but for layering reality with interactive, computational depth. They want to build perception itself.

So in 2018, when the team at Snap reached out for an idea, we presented Evan Spiegel and co. with a telescope, a device for extending vision beyond natural human capacity, making the unseen visible.