by newgameplus

I was just reading this article posted by sounds_sound, and the author correctly notes that we are living in a world of text-based communication. It definitely seems like a majority of my conversations happen through text. Obviously, it's what I'm doing right now. However a couple weeks ago on TWiT, photographer Trey Ratcliff suggested that we're starting to move more and more towards communication through images.

Images do convey a lot a information. They can tell stories, share ideas and bear real emotion. Nowadays, most people are walking around with a device in their pocket that is great for both easily taking and viewing photographs. The explosive popularity of Pinterest could be sign that this how people want receive information, and with Facebook believing Instagram is worth $1billion, it might be easy to conclude that Mark Zuckerburg certainly thinks so.

Obviously a lot of this stems from the fact that viewing an image is very simple. We are, after all, very visually-minded creatures. The low-investment nature of images might be what's fueling their popularity, and explain why they account for almost two-thirds of the Reddit frontpage right now. Could this be a bad thing, diverting attention from more substantive media, or is it efficient? After all, isn't a picture worth 1000 words? So what say you Hubski, should I start exercising my shutter finger more?