Response to "In Defense of the Poor Image"

Hito Steyerl's essay is an argument for the significance of the "poor image", which basically refers to all visual media whose quality or resolution falls below today's HD standards. He talks about instances where it is not possible to capture footage or images in high quality, and therefore the poor image saves the day (bootlegged movies, cellphone videos capturing incriminating evidence or significant events, images that leak information early). Steyerl also mentions that many timeless movies and non-commercial film essays--which were shot on outdated film reels--have no place in our culture today because of their poor image quality, and would have died out were it not for the dedicated cult following that preserves them.

These are somewhat legitimate points in my opinion, and I believe it is a good thing that significant content is preserved, whether in poor quality or not. However, I think it is not so much important that the "poor image" is kept alive, rather than solely the content within it. In the coming decades I'm sure that all image quality will become much more sharp, and even images that fall below normal standards will still adequately sharp in resolution. In particular, smartphones are starting to have a jump in screen resolution and PPI, so once this becomes completely standard we are likely to not have many more poor images.