I took a class in photography a few years back, the history was discussed. I remember seeing the first picture ever containing people and it was was very fuzzy, the people were not as clearly people, as they are now in this photo (referring to picture 1 on this page http://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2015/08/the-gift-of-the-dag...)
Lots of ad and script blockers block JS nowadays, you can definitely go without it. For my browsing habits at least, I find I can disable JS globally and selectively unblock it when I come across a site that does require JS. It's doable, and a tad bit safer too.