Pictures and Stories and What-nots

I feel like the main use for pictures in an informative essay is not only to bring the audience closer to the subject matter but also to help the audience comprehend the information being given. For instance, the main theme or topic that I have been pondering for the last week has been the radical growth of the availability of information in today's technology driven climate. To give a glimpse to the reader of the kind of radical change that we’re dealing with I used several pictures to illustrate roughly how many full size (about 500 page books) would fit into a single gigabyte of memory. It boils down to about 430 books. If the entire FIU library holds about a million books, then that information could be condensed from a seven story building to roughly 2.5 terabytes, which would sit comfortably in the palm of your hand. Pictures are exactly what we need to illustrate such a drastic change in the way we view the world and are the easiest way for a reader to comprehend the magnitude of the change that we’re discussing.