blueginjava

Right now it is 65F on Cape Cod and it is 91 here in KC. Let’s see, where would I rather be?!

So I went out wandering on Tumblr … and I just found 20 or so reasons and examples of how tragically ridiculous and stupid hipsters are.

Or more pointedly, how stupid their ‘80’s parents are for paying all of their “tragically artistic” bills!

Glad to mark the one year mark for this one!

What a year - what a transformative year.  Glad it is over.

I am often amazed at people who choose to express themselves with written text.  I guess I find text as the most alien for communication - yet I love to read.  It just seems so foreign to me to express feelings and ideas in words.  I am such a visual learner and communicator.  I have been spending the day writing about adult learning as part of a class and I just would rather try to express ideas in graphics or images.

Let’s think about this for a minute - humans first tried to communicate in images, y’all know; cave paintings and such.  Then, much later, various forms of written language showed up -  but even the earliest “written language” was in the form of pictures (hieroglyphics).  

With the advent of television the image became king again - not that the king always produced insightful images, but this was certainly a medium that people loved and still love! People can instantly relate to and remember an image better than text they have read.  There is even a lot of educational research that shows that people who can create effective visual images in their minds as they read retain MUCH more information than the casual reader.

Now, with the advent of graphic imaging and various computer imaging, there is a new interest in “visual literacy” as a mode of education and a serious area of study.  Does this seem ironic to anyone?  It seems to me to be the obvious mode of human communication!  Images or graphics - that is what people can instantly relate to.  Just think of the rapid rise in the number of images and videos on YouTube. This happens for a reason people!  Humans think and relate to images!  We are superb at reading human faces and noticing subtle facial signals and are the best animals at color recognition.

For those folks that are “word” people - I am amazed by you.  I cannot imagine thinking in words.  I know it is an effective way for people to express ideas, as I am trying to right now, but what if we could combine both images and words.  What would that look like?

*That just took me 30 minutes to compose - but it was a single image in my head.  There must be a better way!