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Always Bet on Text (2014)

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Re: Always Bet on Text (2014)

#121

Post by naringas »

mihaaly wrote: post #63

Text is not the oldest - nor easiest to use -, text is a heavy abstraction born somewhat recently in human history. The oldest and easiest is the visual in 3D, then comes the visual in 2D. Those exist since we have eyes. Our brain have dedicated and sizeable infrastructure for that. Children can communicate in 3D (gestures, posture, expressions, objects) and in 2D drawings before learning textural communication with…

> visual in 3D

I cannot see in visual 3D. If anything I can see in strictly bigger than 2D. (a flat 'screen' with a tinge of depth perception, which I fear I don't make much use of when I spend most of my time in front of a flat 2D computer screen)

Re: Always Bet on Text (2014)

#122

Post by cycomanic »

upofadown wrote: post #61
cycomanic wrote: post #41

I think the post conflates several quite unrelated concepts under the label text. Also what does he mean by text and information? For example he mentioned the "optical telegraph", which is a semaphore system which used a system of messages which AFAIK were not alphabetic text. Another example if we compare logographic language systems (e.g. Chinese characters, hieroglyphs ...) to alphabetic systems. I guess we can sa…

>..."optical telegraph", which is a semaphore system which used a system of messages which AFAIK were not alphabetic text. The pulses of light in an optical fiber are not alphabetic text either, but we are not talking about baseband here.

Yes but that's unrelated. We can clearly say that digital (binary) representation of information has won for encoding and the information content is well understood since Shannon. However this is not really connected to the current discussion, because binary is clearly is not meant for direct human "consumption".

I was restricting myself to discuss abstractions that are directly used by humans. The messages send in the optical telegraph are conveying things more complex than letters which I would say is what we associate with text. Now you might say that those messages are text, but then we might as well say language is the most flexible and efficient way of communicating, and that's probably correct, but also completely meaningless in this context. That's the issue with this posts, it's either so general that is essentially meaningless, or so specific that it's clearly wrong in general.

Re: Always Bet on Text (2014)

#123

Post by sfifs »

koonsolo wrote: post #98
robenkleene wrote: post #88

The question is whether these advantages are because text is a better communication medium, or because of the limitations of our technology? Take using a computer to type a word versus draw a picture: Effectively everyone who uses a computer can type a word, but I'd bet less than 10% could draw a circle. But put a piece of paper in front of someone and effectively everyone can draw a circle. This points to there bein…

Ah come on, this is not accurate at all. We have tons of tech now: audio, video, charting, etc. Circles are pretty easy in powerpoint or any such software. The tech is obviously here already. But still, why do people prefer sending chat texts instead of calling or video calling? Surely not because of tech.

> But still, why do people prefer sending chat texts instead of calling or video calling? Surely not because of tech

It turns out that people who are highly fluent in a language with a compact alphabet like English prefer sending text chats. My Chinese colleagues and friends routinely send many more voice chat messages than text because it is much more efficient than typing mandarin.

Also in India, I've observed that people fluent in vernacular but not in written English primarily send voice chat messages - again because the vernacular text input is very inefficient

So interestingly does my daughter who can type English text easily but as she always grew up in a world her parents and her friends parents had smartphones, she finds it a lot more comfortable to send voice chat messages.

The other benefit of chat is asynchronocity. You're not forcing the other party to do a context switch and signalling that they can get to ot.

Re: Always Bet on Text (2014)

#124

Post by OhHiMarkos »

I think text is a powerful mean to express ideas, but pictures are also. And it comes down to how people think: in text or in pictures?

I don't know much about it, but there in a talk, Jordan Peterson addressed that there are people who can think in text, in pictures or even both. And that trait says a lot about ones character.

Interesting stuff

Re: Always Bet on Text (2014)

#125

Post by LostJourneyman »

jen20 wrote: post #101
koonsolo wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah come on, this is not accurate at all. We have tons of tech now: audio, video, charting, etc. Circles are pretty easy in powerpoint or any such software. The tech is obviously here already. But still, why do people prefer sending chat texts instead of calling or video calling? Surely not because of tech.

In my case because of the asynchronous nature of text versus vide or voice calls. An effective compromise is voice notes in modern messenger systems, which preserves asynchrony while also allowing the expressiveness of speech.

There's an entire dialect of English that has evolved just to handle expressiveness in text formats. There's a standard and reproducible grammar, and most people (who do or have spent any time on the internet in the last 15 years) use it a second language. Messenger services allow the flexibility of asynchronous communication with the added benefit of synchronous communication when it's important (that's why it's preferred often to email, for example).

Voice notes, like email, are fully async and require actually listening to someone talk, which changes the communication media that you're working in.

Messaging has risen to the prevalence it has because of the features it brings to the table, not in spite of them.

Re: Always Bet on Text (2014)

#126

Post by hliyan »

What I took away from this is: using combinations of a limited set of symbols to convey meaning is durable (as society advances or retreats and technology changes). This makes sense because human thinking, for the most part, seems to be symbolic (i.e. using a smaller, simpler thing to represent a larger more complex thing). Text is just one such form.

Drawings, sculptures, JPG files, videos etc. are more precise and are better at conveying a specific object or event, but not necessarily its meaning.

If I remember correctly, Neal Stephenson's Anathem deals with some of these themes.

Re: Always Bet on Text (2014)

#127

Post by numlock86 »

dmingod666 wrote: post #117
numlock86 wrote: post #93

Apples and oranges. The post states that the used Twitter logo PNG is 4000 bytes, while it's only 723. Try to express that logo in text, English language and in all its details with 723 characters, so you are able to reproduce a pixel perfect representation. Not even possible with 4000 characters anyway. Don't bother. Text will be ambiguous, unless you describe every single detail. If the target is to communicate "Tw…

well, svg is text. The jpg/png icon will pixelate when zoomed, but svg will retain its quality no matter how much you zoom in... :)

> svg is text

Actually I thought about talking about SVG, which would be the natural result of taking a text representation of shapes ... and then use abbreviations until you are at some expert level language (SVG for example), which would then break the argument again. You might as well use some binary representation then, because most people don't speak fluent SVG.

Re: Always Bet on Text (2014)

#128

Post by fotad »

dmingod666 wrote: post #117
numlock86 wrote: post #93

Apples and oranges. The post states that the used Twitter logo PNG is 4000 bytes, while it's only 723. Try to express that logo in text, English language and in all its details with 723 characters, so you are able to reproduce a pixel perfect representation. Not even possible with 4000 characters anyway. Don't bother. Text will be ambiguous, unless you describe every single detail. If the target is to communicate "Tw…

well, svg is text. The jpg/png icon will pixelate when zoomed, but svg will retain its quality no matter how much you zoom in... :)

Different SVG engines may show different result, that may not acceptable for logo.

Re: Always Bet on Text (2014)

#129

Post by dkersten »

He uses a mathematical formula as an example of text, with its symbols and whatnot. I don't count that as "text", to me, its closer to a UML diagram or flowchart than it is to the text I'm using to write this comment. If you just conflate "all things represented through glyphs and symbols", then I find that too broad to be useful.

Re: Always Bet on Text (2014)

#130

Post by [deleted] »

numlock86 wrote: post #93

Apples and oranges. The post states that the used Twitter logo PNG is 4000 bytes, while it's only 723. Try to express that logo in text, English language and in all its details with 723 characters, so you are able to reproduce a pixel perfect representation. Not even possible with 4000 characters anyway. Don't bother. Text will be ambiguous, unless you describe every single detail. If the target is to communicate "Tw…

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