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Always Bet on Text (2014)

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Re: Always Bet on Text (2014)

#61

Post by upofadown »

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.

Re: Always Bet on Text (2014)

#62

Post by bmitc »

necovek wrote: post #22
hrishi wrote: post #14

Agreed, with a counterpoint: Text is efficient at transmitting data. If I want to describe a concept or an event, text is king. However, media is more efficient at transmitting sentiment. It will take you far more than 4000 bytes of text to transmit the feeling or emotion an icon can convey, when used well. This is why we've (as a species) started using emojis, and why media leans to emotion and sentiment while text…

Emojis evolved from simple text like ":)" or ":/". And for the new set of emojis, half the time I am not sure what the sentiment is being expressed!

That’s part of the fun of emojis. It’s also a counterpoint to the original post. There is a lot of information in a pictorial emoji, so much so that it can be bent and reimagined to many contexts.

Re: Always Bet on Text (2014)

#63

Post by mihaaly »

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 great effort.

Text is more regular and reliable in certain contexts (not always, sometimes a pictogram or others are better), when the circumstances are proper for that.

Text has its uses, just like all the other forms, not being paramount, not at all!

(I'd also argue about that we could read old texts. Sometimes yes, but sometimes we cannot read present ones neither if the cultural and knowledge background is inadequate. Which is just aggravated by the ages)

Re: Always Bet on Text (2014)

#64

Post by uryga »

snidane wrote: post #27
Ygg2 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's solid technology to be excited about. For example. Graphical programming languages are nowhere. Closest I had was either VHDL or backed by copious amounts of XML like Xtend. And both of those have a textual Component as well.

Because graphical programming are just textual programming languages which are just overly complex (xml) and coming with attached visualization engine for its components. They are used only for limited domains such as composing some data flows or video node editors, etc. because visualization of anything more sophisticated would make one's head explode. You could just as well visualize components of AST of Python for…

> Because graphical programming are just textual programming languages which are just overly complex (xml)

i don't think that's fair. i mean, on a computer, you have to serialize everything into sequences of bytes. you could also encode images into XML:

  
  
  ...
but i wouldn't say that makes them "textual".

Re: Always Bet on Text (2014)

#65

Post by smoe »

Ygg2 wrote: post #6
chordalkeyboard wrote: post #2

> Text is the most efficient communication technology. By orders of magnitude. 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: Author is really excited about really old information technology. He makes some good points.

It's solid technology to be excited about. For example. Graphical programming languages are nowhere. Closest I had was either VHDL or backed by copious amounts of XML like Xtend. And both of those have a textual Component as well.

Graphical programming languages are fairly popular for “scripting” and signal processing in various domains like visual effects, sound design, game dev, etc.

Sure you wouldn’t want to implement the underlying systems in them, but I do think they have their place and are often undervalued by developers.

Re: Always Bet on Text (2014)

#66

Post by Horba »

kreeben wrote: post #56
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…

I agree that the author has mislabeled "text". What are characters if not pictures? What is text if not a sequence of pictures? What's a picture if not a depiction of a concept? In a bag-of-words type of model, I see no difference between a word and a painting, no difference between the body of work of van Gogh and the body of work of Kafka. They both use multiple sets of concepts to compose new sets of concepts. Pic…

The medium of your reply contradicts the content.

Re: Always Bet on Text (2014)

#67

Post by sillysaurusx »

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…

That's true. But the oldest isn't necessarily the best; civilization happened at roughly the same time text started becoming widespread, and that doesn't seem like a coincidence.

It's also interesting that 3D is so hard to translate into a usable context in computing. VR has felt like a second-class citizen compared to a mouse and keyboard in terms of usability. Not that the two are mutually exclusive – it was nice having as many giant monitors as you wanted in a 3D space.

What's needed is a 3D web browser, with websites connected with portals that you can walk through. I think gather.town is surprisingly close to that. http://gather.town/

Re: Always Bet on Text (2014)

#68

Post by powerapple »

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…

The reason human knowledge develops so fast is the existence of text. If we rely on visual in 3D we will be the same as other animals. Apparently now we are behaving badly since we are consuming videos and pictures rather than text. I believe text is superior because of its abstraction, when you read, you are creating alongside the author.

Re: Always Bet on Text (2014)

#69

Post by bitL »

bmitc wrote: post #60

Why are people so afraid of moving forward? Imagine saying “always bet on punch cards”. Look at any whiteboard in any company or school. It’s filled with text and diagrams. Then watch how someone interacts with a PowerPoint or whiteboard. There is animation and dimensional extension. The way people think and organize and communicate thoughts is multifaceted and multidimensional. It only makes sense that we should be…

It's academia and some important professions (lawyers, accountants) that are primarily audio-textual in their perception and those often occupy the most important decision-making positions, forcing their mode of operation on everybody else, even if 80% of people have a different dominant perception mode.

Re: Always Bet on Text (2014)

#70

Post by keiferski »

Photography is about 200 years old. Film (moving images) is about 100 years old. The ability to easy create video is about 20 years old.

Compare all of that to text, which is at least thousands of years old. And then compare text to speech, which is hundreds of thousands of years old. Had a way to record and replay audio been developed before writing, it’s likely that you’d be listening to this comment right now, not reading it.

I’d say we’re at the extreme beginning of a highly audiovisual age. A millennium or two from now, writing “dead” words might seem as ancient to our descendants as foot messengers appear to us: useful for particular purposes but mostly irrelevant.

On a related note, the concept of logocentrism seems relevant here:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logocentrism

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