I worked for a company in 2000-2001 that had a small branch that built custom industrial machine vision systems. It was probably the most fun I've ever had in my career. Anyway, one day the head of the branch gathered everyone together and talked about how he wanted to break off from the master company and build a machine vision startup. Everyone was extremely excited and most agreed to follow him on the spot.
One week later 9/11 happened.
One week after that the same branch head gathered everyone together and laid off 80% of the staff. You see, "industrial machine vision was no longer viable"[1]. We were crushed and I moved on to other fields.
I haven't though about machine vision much in the past 10 years, but I think I'll read this book. Thanks for the submission.
[1]: Vision system to seek and destroy on the other hand...