The evolution of photography illustrates the bounty of the second machine age, the first great economic consequence of the exponential, digital, combinatorial progress taking place at present. The second one, spread, means there are large and growing differences among people in income, wealth, and other important circumstances of life. We’ve created a cornucopia of images, sharing nearly four hundred billion “Kodak moments” each year with a few clicks of a mouse or taps on a screen. But companies like Instagram and Facebook employ a tiny fraction of the people that were needed at Kodak.
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