Disrupt or be disrupted

George Eastman was ''not especially gifted'' according to the academic standards of his age.

When his father died, he dropped out of high school, aged 14, to support his family. Ten years later, in 1877, he wanted to go on holiday and record the trip. The photographic equipment of the day was a camera the size of a microwave and a tent-like structure in which to smear the photographic emulsion on the glass plates before exposing them. To learn how to use it cost him $5, or a third of his weekly salary.

He never made the holiday trip, but spent the next three years trying to simplify this early photographic process and April 1880 was the genesis of what would become the Eastman Kodak film company.

His first Kodak camera was sold in 1888, using the memorable phrase he came up with himself: "You press the button, we do the rest," according to the history of the company.

Kodak, a name he invented, would become synonymous with photography, arguably becoming one of the greatest monopolies of all time. It made the film, chemicals to process it and paper to print the images. It sold a compact camera that almost anyone could use in what was an absurdly technical art form back then.

Photographers loved its Kodachrome film, which Neil Armstrong used to take pictures on the moon; and Paul Simon even wrote a song about it.

What's more, Kodak was the first company to make a digital camera, in 1975, nogal.

Last Thursday, the iconic originator of the "Kodak moment" filed for bankruptcy.

It was killed by its own invention, which it spectacularly failed to capitalise on.

Of all the so-called digital disruptions, this has been arguably the most painful - well, for a certain age of person who remembers the sheer magic of developing their own film; of watching the images begin to appear on the photographic paper as it soaked in the developing chemicals.

Last week there were other, much more hyped announcements that imperilled other age-old businesses ripe for similar disruptions.

Apple announced its much-hyped assault on school textbooks - a multibillion-dollar industry - with a combination of an iPad (obviously, as Apple always drives sales of its hardware, like it did with its iPods and music) and the software to create visually stunning, interactive, video-rich textbooks.

These are the study guides for the 21st-century, where this generation of digital natives are more likely to use tablets than personal computers or any of the other outdated 20th-century tech we're all still so nostalgic about.

That includes good old paper books. I love the smell and touch of paper as much as the next bookworm, but such books are the Kodak of publishing.

Until the Kindle and other e-readers arrived, they were the best delivery mechanism available for dispensing literature or history textbooks.

Don't hold your breath about iPads flooding South African schools, or making our teachers obsolete.

As brilliant a technical solution as they are, they're simply too expensive and unobtainable for the vast majority of schools.

A more apt solution for Africa is a Kindle-like device, with its long-battery life and screen that can be read in sunlight. Yet even these are too pricey for resources-starved emerging markets.

But, like that first Kodak digital camera from 1975 that was the size of a toaster, it's just the beginning.

The publishing industry is ripe for disruption - and the book publishers especially are on notice, having seen what the self-publishing might of Amazon's Kindle store offers.

As the famous maxim goes, "You have to cannibalise your own business before someone else does."

• Shapshak is the editor of Stuff magazine