The identification of text as a communications technology, the oldest surviving one, is fascinating to me. Spoken language also has to be taught and acquired. It does seem to be something we are...
The identification of text as a communications technology, the oldest surviving one, is fascinating to me.
(assuming we treat speech/signing as natural phenomenon -- there are no human societies without it -- whereas textual capability has to be transmitted, taught, acquired)
Spoken language also has to be taught and acquired. It does seem to be something we are naturally wired to do, though. (Alternatively, you could argue language is also a technology, but being more ancient and more ubiquitous than text, it's even harder to think of it as one.)
This blog post is likely to take perhaps 5000 bytes of storage, and could compress down to maybe 2000; by comparison the following 20-pixel-square image of the silhouette of a tweeting bird takes 4000 bytes
I must be in a pedantic mood today, but surely a 20x20 image can compress more than that: 400 pixels at 32-bit color (3 bytes RGB, 1 alpha) would still only be 1600 bytes. But yes, text does allow communications to be extremely information dense.
Even though text is a fantastically useful technology, one that generalizes very well (the Phoenicians weren't planning ahead for Unix), it is still just a technology. It is likely to help, but it is not guaranteed to be the best tool for the job! Graydon used a mathematical expression as one of his examples of text, but the first thing that came to my mind was knot theory, in which you see hand-drawn diagrams aplenty in published papers. Granted, the first thing we do is name the knots with symbols so we can encapsulate them in text, but still — this corner of math resists text-ification.
I think the argument is that it's a very powerful technology, and just how powerful is perhaps underrated and/or taken for granted. I don't think it's just this corner – diagrams are pretty...
it is still just a technology
I think the argument is that it's a very powerful technology, and just how powerful is perhaps underrated and/or taken for granted.
Granted, the first thing we do is name the knots with symbols so we can encapsulate them in text, but still — this corner of math resists text-ification.
I don't think it's just this corner – diagrams are pretty important in actually performing mathematics (perhaps less important in documenting it).
I think I read recently that gen z favors subtitles and captions more than any other generation because they watch so much tik tok and short form video. That's just another argument that text...
I think I read recently that gen z favors subtitles and captions more than any other generation because they watch so much tik tok and short form video. That's just another argument that text always wins
I'm a millennial so I can't speak for gen z, but subtitles in my house are almost entirely because Hollywood can't mix audio to save their life. I have to choose between hearing quite dialog or...
I'm a millennial so I can't speak for gen z, but subtitles in my house are almost entirely because Hollywood can't mix audio to save their life. I have to choose between hearing quite dialog or not shattering my windows when anything else happens. At this point it's just nice to make sure I don't miss anything.
I'm a millennial and I like subtitles because: I think text-first, and define words by their spelling more than pronunciation. People in something like Dune mumbling something about Jesuits means...
I'm a millennial and I like subtitles because:
I think text-first, and define words by their spelling more than pronunciation. People in something like Dune mumbling something about Jesuits means absolutely nothing to me until I can see they're saying bene gesserits, and it will bother me all the way through the film until I can look it up. Then I can properly define and mentally categorize it.
I watch a lot of subtitled anime, grew up reading novels a lot, and read faster than anyone talks in any language. I also read subtitles in games and skip instead of waiting for the voice acting to get to the point.
I even listen to music with subtitles, periodically. Much of the music I listen to these days is Japanese, which I'm very slowly learning, and it's nice to be able to understand the lyrics.
The identification of text as a communications technology, the oldest surviving one, is fascinating to me.
Spoken language also has to be taught and acquired. It does seem to be something we are naturally wired to do, though. (Alternatively, you could argue language is also a technology, but being more ancient and more ubiquitous than text, it's even harder to think of it as one.)
I must be in a pedantic mood today, but surely a 20x20 image can compress more than that: 400 pixels at 32-bit color (3 bytes RGB, 1 alpha) would still only be 1600 bytes. But yes, text does allow communications to be extremely information dense.
Even though text is a fantastically useful technology, one that generalizes very well (the Phoenicians weren't planning ahead for Unix), it is still just a technology. It is likely to help, but it is not guaranteed to be the best tool for the job! Graydon used a mathematical expression as one of his examples of text, but the first thing that came to my mind was knot theory, in which you see hand-drawn diagrams aplenty in published papers. Granted, the first thing we do is name the knots with symbols so we can encapsulate them in text, but still — this corner of math resists text-ification.
I think the argument is that it's a very powerful technology, and just how powerful is perhaps underrated and/or taken for granted.
I don't think it's just this corner – diagrams are pretty important in actually performing mathematics (perhaps less important in documenting it).
I think I read recently that gen z favors subtitles and captions more than any other generation because they watch so much tik tok and short form video. That's just another argument that text always wins
I'm a millennial so I can't speak for gen z, but subtitles in my house are almost entirely because Hollywood can't mix audio to save their life. I have to choose between hearing quite dialog or not shattering my windows when anything else happens. At this point it's just nice to make sure I don't miss anything.
I'm a millennial and I like subtitles because:
I think text-first, and define words by their spelling more than pronunciation. People in something like Dune mumbling something about Jesuits means absolutely nothing to me until I can see they're saying bene gesserits, and it will bother me all the way through the film until I can look it up. Then I can properly define and mentally categorize it.
I watch a lot of subtitled anime, grew up reading novels a lot, and read faster than anyone talks in any language. I also read subtitles in games and skip instead of waiting for the voice acting to get to the point.
I even listen to music with subtitles, periodically. Much of the music I listen to these days is Japanese, which I'm very slowly learning, and it's nice to be able to understand the lyrics.