Has the decline of knowledge work begun?

This is a huge deal in some industries even today. Such as film photography. No one makes 35mm cameras although it would be all too easy to rehash a good 90s point and shoot model and have it sell like hotcakes (see prices/hype on olympus mjuII). No one even makes or services lab scanners anymore; all those noritsus and fronteirs for pro lab scans are approaching 30 years old and nothing is even close on the market or could even catch up to what went on in terms of R and D building these machines for a seriously profitable industry at the time.

Film has been getting increasingly popular. Local film labs are busy and new ones are opening. It is the vinyl record of imaging. Yet despite this, kodak and fujifilm have responded as most lack of forsight businesses do and cut film stocks, raised prices, constantly trying to squeeze more blood from the stone which goes on to kill growth in the industry vs supporting it and fostering actual growth and more profits more than 1 quarter out.

There is always retro enhusiasts of "obsolete" tech/methods, people knit despite there being cheap cotton clothes, people tinker with 50s cars despite everything.

While there is tons of money to be made for niche-enthusiasts, these niche's aren't always large enough to properly re-industrialize (chemical regulations, expensive machinery,etc).

> No one makes 35mm cameras although it would be all too easy to rehash a good 90s point and shoot model and have it sell like hotcakes

Quite a few new 35mm cameras are being developed and sold. From the budget Long Weekend, the uber-pricy Leica M6, and the mid-range Pentax 17. Even some half-frames are coming out, including from Kodak.

Retro enthusiast solution in this case is a 3d printed can you attach to your lens and its on you to revert and grade the color in lightroom. Better hope the camera is perfectly aligned to the negative that is perfectly flat and you have a lens that can focus a flat field free of distortions. It is a far cry to the engineering that went into these pro lab scanners. Just the color science alone people struggle to replicate, resolution and sharpness throughout the frame as well, speed of handling for lab setting is second to none. People still pay a premium for these scans on these particular machines.

Kodachrome homebrew efforts don’t get close either. The process is too bespoke and reliant on instruments that no longer exist. Even proper c41 chemistry is down to just when the full kodak kit is in stock and not backordered by desperate developers: those instagram brands kit contains blix and are inferior as a result to a separate bleach and fix kit. Fuji press kit the old alternative is hard or impossible to find.

And no one is making new cameras. Only fixing old ones and only popular models able to be fixed and worth the time creating a secondary market of parts for (so basically Leica and pay for that or be relatively SOL to varying degrees for most else).

The biggest issue is this stuff was created when film was a global industry. tens of thousands of engineers were working on every step of the process for decades. That is gone now. All that old knowledge and learnings mostly gone because these companies kept poor records and destroyed old obsolete notes and material. Not just how the camera works but how to manufacture it and everything else at scale or at least in a way that it is actually profitable. And perhaps it could never become profitable without efficiencies brought on by scale and massive investment in manufacturing. And it would actually be forever be lost once all this equipment we still have falls apart.