It is a pattern that we frequently see arise since the digitization of media: there is more, but it is of a lesser quality. Take music. Digitization has brought us into contact with a virtually infinite collection of music. Initially, we exchanged them illegally using Napster; now there is Spotify where you can get millions of numbers free of charge. The audio quality of the music is worse than it was on vinyl or CD, but that doesn’t bother us. The same applies to videos on YouTube. The picture quality of the average video is awful, certainly when compared to the high definition pictures of some digital TV channels or Blu-ray discs, but we put up with it.
An e-reader doesn’t surpass the interface of a printed book, but with an e-reader you can take more easily more books on holiday with you. For writers, it has become easier to publish a book; they do not necessarily need a publisher and can publish the book themselves. The online communities are also very appealing to fervent readers; they cross borders and are stimulating. But we ourselves remain the biggest stimulus. If you believe that you read with too little attention, then you will have to free up some time. It’s as simple as that. If that doesn’t work – and there’s every chance of that – then you will have to be more rigorous: get rid of the TV, leave your laptop in the office, and get a dumb phone.
Erwin van der Zande is the founder and current editor-in-chief of Bright magazine.
73. Designing a New Stratification of Information – René van Engelenburg
There may very well be drivers who are an exception, but I think that for most, observing traffic signs along the road is an automatism. You pick up the relevant data: ‘here the maximum speed limit is 130 kph’. But actually the reverse is true: you ‘unconsciously’ filter out what is not interesting. ‘Prohibited for vehicles weighing more than 5,000 kg’; whoever saw that sign? And so you ‘scan’ yourself a route through the traffic.
An explosion of screens has engulfed us in recent years; from smartphones, iPads, laptops, touch panels on ticket machines, personal navigation systems, and public signposting, to electronic advertising panels and gigantic urban screens. The physical world at all levels is slowly but surely being devoured and covered by the virtual. Behind all those screens there is a world of ‘new media’ people who invisibly provide content 24/7: make apps, fill websites, do dtp, program RSS-Feeds, transmit broad and narrow casting streams, provide Twitter feeds, and very occasionally make a digital work of art. An incomprehensible stream of text, image, and symbols, which have all been thought up and designed by somebody. All those screens have an enormous impact on the way in which we experience our environment and influence our actions.
In this new world, artists and designers have more chance than ever to think about and to build that approaching ‘New Babylon’; the modernistic ideal world of CoBrA artist Constant Nieuwenhuis, where the architecture will adapt itself to the changing circumstances so that you, as a completely free and nomad individual, will never return to exactly the same place. Where you, just like the driver, automatically filter what is relevant information for you on your way to your next location.
The reality, however, has not yet arrived in ‘New Babylon’; the integration of this new media layer and the ‘old architecture’ will demand years of development. Museums, broadcasting companies, cinemas, and theatres, the classic providers of culture content, have the chance, and perhaps the obligation, to play a leading role in that developing world. They could begin by reinventing themselves by integrating all the various media layers into a search for new possibilities for the public that then not only absorbs information, but also shapes it themselves.
René van Engelenburg, designer and initiator of DROPSTUFF.nl; Urban Screen Network for the Digital and Interactive Arts.
74. Dancing Words – Francisco van Jole
In the second half of the twentieth century, the arrival of vinyl and the transistor made music permanently available to everybody. And the first thing that perished was the dance. Before this, dancing was subject to rules, encapsulated in formats. Waltz or foxtrot, Charleston or tango. Each had its own demands that the dancer had to satisfy. That drawing up of rules is part of restricted availability: making as efficient and intense use as possible of what is available. Scarcity exacts discipline. ‘I cannot dance’ means: I haven’t mastered the rules.
Subsequently, dancing became self-invented rhythmic movements of the body There is practically complete freedom, with no or very few rules. Everybody does whatever they like.
A similar liberation arose with the digitization of language. The computer, thanks to the word processor and email, was the first to ensure that written language, with all its specific format rules, was ousted by spoken language. Then the SMS message appeared and put pay to the most elementary spelling rules, like a sort of house music of written language. It is all about the ability to express instead of mastering skills. For the language purist, it is destruction; for the user it is liberation. More people than ever express themselves in writing.
At the same time, the image is in the ascendency. When I am searching for the meaning of a word in a foreign language, I make at least as much use of Google Images to be able to see what it is at a glance as Google Translations. YouTube is used more than you think as a search machine or encyclopaedia. Ask yourself the question: ‘how does the heart work?’ and you know why pictures are preferable.
Images also win because language is too complicated, too abstract. The example that stands out the most is the smiley. If you want to replace this with words, you will need considerably more time and thought to do it.
For the lovers of language, that is a horror scenario: the image that suppresses the language. But regardless of the question of whether that suppression really is so complete, it actually leads, in practice, to the opposite development. Image language is not yet levelled out, the proper mastery of it is as yet a scarce skill, the rules are stricter. Image is the new field of the expert. As language once was. And before that the dance. Dancing words, that is automatically an image in your mind.
Francisco van Jole is an Internet journalist and writer.
75. Books Are Bullets in the Battle for the Minds of Men – Peter van Lindonk
What inspires more? A picture or a text? Stupid question, of course – sometimes a picture and sometimes a text. But almost everybody thinks that a picture always wins. Who hasn’t heard the sentence: ‘A picture says more than a thousand words’? It was first written by Frederick R. Barnard, the marketing boss of Street Railways Advertising, in the trade magazine Printers Ink of 8 December 1921. Frederick is honest enough to say that this piece of wisdom was not his, but came from a Japanese philosopher. He wasn’t, incidentally, completely honest: a few years later, he had changed ‘a thousand words’ into ‘ten thousand words’, and the Japanese philosopher suddenly became Chinese.
The answer to the question is: the picture has the potential of winning in all its simplicity from a torrent of words, but that does not mean that it is always the case. The problem is that looking at a picture is, in principle, easier than reading words. I say ‘in principle’, because just as a child must learn to read and write, a child must also learn to ‘read’ a picture, to analyse it, or even to reject it. In a world full of visual violence, ‘learning to see’ (not learning to look) should be a mandatory subject.