Viswanathan K's Thoughts

Abundance. The opposite of scarcity and shortage. While abundance may sound like a good thing, that’s only for some people, writes David Parell: “Abundance is a paradox. Environments of abundance are bad for the median consumer but extremely good for a small number of conscious ones. Average consumers are doomed to the tyranny of instinct. Meanwhile, consumers at the top are propelled by unlimited access to nutritious food and information. ”   The parallels between abundance of food and information are revealing: “The parking lot was full of restaurants, but there were no healthy options. Americans are overweight, not because of scarcity but because of abundance — just like the news. ”   While there’s abundance of information on the Internet, he says, “the Internet makes it hard to find nutrient-dense information”. You can find the junk food equivalent of information effortlessly on the Net: “On the Internet, low-quality content drives out high-quality content, ...

The quality of the photos on Instagram are unbelievably great. How did that happen? Its founder Kevin Systrom loved art – he even went to Florence to learn photography, write Sarah Frier in her biography of Instagram . His teacher took away his camera and instead gave him a smaller device that could only take blurry, black and white, square photographs. “The idea – of a square photo transformed into art through editing – stuck in the middle of Systrom’s mind.”   This weird form of training would prove useful. When the first mass market smartphone, the iPhone, was launched, it suddenly became possible for anyone to take a photo anytime. Except that its camera (and hence the quality of the photos) sucked. Besides, Internet speeds were low, which meant it was a pain to upload high-res photos anyway (I know, it feels a lifetime away). It was almost as if the stars had lined up for Instagram – it became the app with filters (“art through editing”). The app caught on fast, so much ...