The Instagram Revolution

Smartphones and lnstagram are completing the revolution in visual communication that George Eastman started more than a century ago.

"Any school-boy or girl can make good pictures," declared an Eastman Kodak ad for the Brownie box camera soon after it launched in February 1900. It was an astonishing claim, given the unwieldy equipment, arcane chemistry, and extravagant expense of 19thcentury photography. Sold for a dollar and preloaded with film, George Eastman's ultra-portable, one-button cardboard shooter could hardly match professional rigs in image quality, but by sponsoring contests, starting clubs, and charging just pennies for prints, Eastman nurtured something else: photography as a social activity.

Instagram is a free photo-sharing program and social network that was launched in October 2010. The service enables users to take a photo, apply a digital filter to it, and then share it with other Instagram users they are connected to on the social network as well as on a variety of social networking services.