№ 352. Words v. Images

In the beginning was the Word (John 1:1). The eagle-eyed Evangelist knew that logos wielded power over reality.

Centuries later, another John,  a Gutenburg, ushered the modern era of human history with his movable type printing press in 1439. His machine democratized learning and helped catalyze Renaissance, Reformation, scientific revolution and sparked many, many wars. The death of old ideas, ancient regimes and powers gave way to new players and new world orders. The Vatican and the British Monarchy are the very rare relics that have survived the chaos of the last four or so centuries.

Another era has begun.

This era is fast shaping our thinking, our way of life and our politics. Today, in a world wrapped in Instagram images, GIFs and viral memes, the written word is losing much of its temporal relevance and political space.

Time Magazine is dead. Long live the emoticons. And the midnight tweets and fake news. Falsehoods, half-, quarter- truths or semblances thereof are slowly creeping as acceptable norms. 

Words are now manufactured or tweaked in the service of images.

"Trump’s admission that he never reads a book all the way through is symptomatic of his rhetorical style. He offers a 'highly constrained [language] to starve the public of the concepts needed to think about the past, present and future', Snyder argues. In the president’s frame of reference events are only ever bad or sad or mad. With his Dr Seuss vocabulary, he can present the world as a place of simplistic oppositions, stripped of nuance."

To simplify a complex reality, use the levers of pictures which, it is said, are equivalent to an army of a thousand words. Strip away the layers of meaning. Dispense with the granular.

Use symbols. Use icons. Use visuals.

If you have Big Brother aspirations, start with the one ring to rule them all: the potency of images.