Since the invention of the printing press the written word has held a position of particular power within our media. In parallel, access to the resources that enabled print meant the press owners could occupy a privileged position in society.  Over recent years the internet has changed all that and now the New York Times and Joe Soap's blog compete on a much more even basis.

But now there is a new revolution.

Our communication itself is changing; text is losing its grip.  Digital technology means that the image is achieving stratospheric ascendancy.

Jesse Thomas, on Vimeo, shows us some incredible statistics.  There are are now 234 million websites and 126 million blogs and within those:

• 2.5 billion photographs are uploaded to Facebook each month
• 4 billion photographs are hosted by Flickr
• At the current rate, 30 billion photographs are uploaded to Facebook each year
• YouTube serves 1 billion videos per day
• 12.2 Billion videos are viewed on YouTube each month

It seems that our future is changing; the future is visual...

JESS3 / The State of The Internet from Jesse Thomas on Vimeo.