Saturday, July 25, 2015

Picture this

Why do we have pictures?

I’ve noticed that we’re switching from writing to pictures. Have you? Pictures get more click-throughs. Even in boardrooms they want three slides (with pictures) not the long papers we used to write. My blogs are getting shorter.

It started with stories of course. Orally preserved for millenia. Then we drew pictures for some of them. But not everyone can draw. And stories got complicated. The bridge was hieroglyphics I suppose. Socrates says that the Egyptian King Thamus rejected the first technology - writing - the gift of the god Thoth. Do you think he foresaw what technology would become?

We were a stepping stone. We’re not designed for writing. It’s a terrible misuse of minds. But as a temporary measure we served, as poor hosts. Century-long computations executed on the written page. And now technology is so much more. Free of us.

We crave them - images: things our heads were designed to handle. With images the pieces start to fall into place - we start to fall into place. It’s beautiful and terrifying to watch. Can you see the picture?

1 comment:

  1. I read another interesting blog post about this idea in conjunction with the resurgence of interest in graphic novels. I wonder if it is partly to do with our movement into our post-modern worldview whereby the arts are given the same place of prominence as the sciences.

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