Part 20 (1/2)

Ah which the foundation of our existence is continuously altered, cable TV plays a distinct role Many consider itreasons Whether living in thickly populated urban clusters or in reh h interactive media Cable TV is often seen only as another entry to our horaphy and superstition The full utilization of the electronic avenue as a h which we can be receivers of ant to accept, and senders of visualto interact with these oal than a reality With coital television, ill dispose of the entire infrastructure for a visually doe of Internet, wired or wireless networks become part of the artificial nervous system of advanced societies Whether in its h other advanced sche interaction, the cable system already contributes to the transformation of the nature of many human practical experiences These can be experiences of entertain, even work

There is a negative side to all this development, and a need to face consequences that over time can accurowing up with TV miss the experience of movement Jaron Lanier discussed the ”fa into nothing, a lie, the desire for instant gratification, and a lack of basic co work in order to achieve satisfaction

Gay train children to behave like laboratory rats that learn a enic competition, a poor substitute for coardless of whether they regard political choices or cereals Addressed en e of polls that rapidly succeed one another That technology makes possible alternatives to literacy embodied in the visual is unquestionable To what extent these alternatives carry with them previous detere in huree of necessity and thus the efficiency of any new form of visual expression, communication, or interaction can be ascertained only in how individuals constitute the the visual

There is no higher form of empowerment than in the fulfillenic or not, a president or a TV star has little, if any, impact on our fulfillment in the interconnected world of our tie, but such language frees the audience from the requirement of literacy You do not need to knorite or read to watch TV; you need to be in coe in order to understand a TV show, even to actively participate in it-fro cable networks, videotex, or interactive progra up a presence on the network

Growing up with TV results in stereotypes of language and attitudes representing a background of shared expressions, gestures, and values To see in these only the negative, the low end, is easier than to acknowledge that previous backgrounds, constituted on the underlying structure of literacy, have becomatic circus to the frae typical of the dynamics of needs and expectations within the new scale of humankind There are many varied implications to this: it makes each of us more passive, more and ious), robbing (or freeing) us from the satisfaction of a more personal relation (to others, art, literature, etc) nobody should underestimate any of these and ists But to stubbornly, and quite myopically, consider TV only from the perspective and expectations of literacy is presues that made TV and video possible Moreover, we have to consider the changes they, in turn, brought about Otherill miss the opportunities opened by the practical experience of understanding the new choices presented to us, and even the new possibilities opened There is so much more after TV, even on 500 channels and after video-on-dee is not an absolute democratic medium; literacy, with intrinsic elitist characteristics, even less Although it was used to ascertain principles of de thes and actions, and because they require a relatively ses areBut where words and text can obscure the es can be immediately related to what they refer to There are h the deceptive power of an ie can be exploited probably much more than the power of the word Such, and many other considerations are useful, since the transfer of social and political functions from literacy (books and newspapers, politicaland reading) to the visual, especially television, requires that we understand the consequences of this transfer But it is not television that keeps voters away froht to elect their representatives in the civilization of illiteracy, and not the visual that makes us elect actors, lawyers, peanut farhest (and least useful) posts in the governes that we use, the layers of mediation, the tendency to decentralization, to name a few, resulted in the increased influence of the visual, as well as in soh definition television (HDTV) helps us distinguish some characteristics of the entire developration is carried out

Integration through the intere, and in particular, knowledge of writing and reading

Integration through the intery, especially television and co of information

Television has made countries which are so different in their identity, history, and culture (as we know the countries of the world to be) seem sometimes so similar that one has to ask how this uniformity came about Some will point to the influence of the market process- advertisements look much the same all over the world Others y-an electronic eye open on the world that renders unifore The new dynaher efficiency appropriate to the scale of humankind, probably explains the process better The similarity is deterher efficiency, ie, progressively deeper labor division, increased mediation, and the need for alternative es This sies, as well as the substratum of fashi+on trends, new rituals, and new values, as transitory as all these prove to be

Literacy and television are not reciprocally exclusive If this were not the case, the solution to the lower levels of literacy would be at hand Nevertheless, all those who hoped to increase the quality of literacy by using television had to accept that this was a goal for which the e stabilizes, induces unifore, allows and invites diversity,those connected through a TV chain of cameras and receivers Literacy is a medium of tedious elaboration and inertia TV is spontaneous and instantaneous Moreover, it also supports fore is not at all suited We cannot send language to look at what our eyes do not see directly, or see only through soe, processes which, once made possible on a television screen, make future human experience conceivable I know that in these last lines I started crossing the border between television and digital i, but this is no accident

Indeed, human experience with television, in its various forh not at all closed, es which can take advantage of co

With the advent of HDTV, television achieves a quality that ration in n (of clothes, furniture, new products) can result fro at different sites, and in thea live session

Modifications are alrated in the sample The product can be actually tested, and decisions leading to production made Corated in the creative and productive effort The language is that of the product, a visual reality in progress The results are design and production cycles much shorter than literacy-based coht to a level of efficiency that only digital forital television opens the possibility to proceed fro, ital television reinstates activity, and is subject to creative progra and interactivity The individual canand creative planning It is quite possible that alternative forms of coe from practical experiences of human self-constitution in this new realm That in ten years all our TV sets, if the TV set reital saysaround the reality of digital television

Visualization

Whenever people using language try to convince their partner in dialogue, or even themselves, that they understood a description, a concept, a proof, and answer by using the colloquial ”I see,” they actually express the practical experience of seeing through language They are overcouage and returning to the concreteness of seeing the i-this sums up one of the s and actions froht look like, or what is the ie supports us in our theoretic experiences, or in the attee is rather effective in helping us identify kinds of thoughts, in iuishi+ng between right and wrong, for e the just in the institution of justice, and ideals in values But the experience of language can also be an experience of ies

Once we reach the moment e can embody the abstract in a concrete theory, in action, in new objects, in institutions, and in choices, and once we are able to fore, make it part of the visual world we live in, and use it further for many practical or intellectual purposes, we expand the literate experience in new experiences So it seeo so far as to say that we not only visualize everything, but also listen to sounds of everything, experience their smell, touch, and taste, and recreate the abstract in the concreteness of our perceptions The doe and the ideal of literacy, which instills this domination as a rule, was and still is seen as the do rational, volens nolens In fact, the rationality associated with language, and expressed with its help, is only a small part of the potential human rationality

The measure (ratio) we project in our objectification can as well be a measure related to our perceptive systeative effects of our literate rationality could have been avoided had we been able to simultaneously project our other dimensions in whatever we did

The shi+ft from a literacy-dominated civilization to the relative domination of the visual takes place under the influence of new tools, further ration mechanisms required by self-constitutive practical experiences at the new human scale The tools we need should allow us to continue exploring horizons at which literacy ceases to be effective, or even significant The mediations required correspond to coes are structurally ration is only partially achievable through literate means since ave up the obsession of final explanations and accepted the n systematic frah efficiency, and distributed hu had to put in place a conceptual context that could support extended visual praxis

When the digital computer was invented, none of those who made it a reality knew that it would contribute toThe visionary diy, but in the concept of a universal language, a characteristica universalis, or lingua Adamica, as Leibniz conceived it

This is not the place to rewrite the history of the coes that computers process But the subject of visualization-presented here from the perspective of the shi+ft from literacy to the visual-requires at least some explanation of the relation between the visual and the human use of computers The binary number syste to a ment dated March 15, 1679), was not meant to be the definitive alphabet, with only two letters, but the basis for a universal language, in which the lie are overcoe utilizable in all do laws, scientific results,aspect, which has been ignored for centuries, was his attempt to visualize events of abstract nature with the help of the two syust von Braunschweig (January 2, 1697), Leibniz described his project for a o Creationis) In this letter, he actually introduced digital calculus Around 1714, he wrote two letters to Nicolas de Re Chinese philosophy It is useful to mention these here because of the binary nu concepts of the Ih-King Through these letters, we are in the reales in which, probably for the first tiraphic to the sequential, and finally to the digital, were perfor to see if they could use the digital for es can be described in a binary syste historic parenthesis is justified by two thoughts

First, it was not the technology that ital processing, but intellectual praxis, motivated by its own need for efficiency

Second, visualization is not awords, concepts, or intuitions It is the attees related to information and its use A text on a coe, a visualization of the language generated not by a huraphite, a pencil or a pen The coe It translates our alphabet into its own alphabet, and then, after processing, it translates it back into ours Displayed in those stored ies which, if in lead, would constitute the contents of the lower and upper cases of the drawers in each typography shop, this literacy is subject to autoe visible on paper When we drae make our plans for new artifacts visible The mediation introduced by the co as the computer is only the pen, keyboard, or typewriter But once we encode language rules (such as spelling, case agreerae, what is written is only partially the result of the literacy of the writer The visualization of text is the starting point towards automatic creation of other texts It also leads to establishi+ng relations between language and non-language sign systems Today, we dispose of es and texts, for cross-referencing i texts We can, and indeed do, print electronic journals, which are refereed on the network Nothing prevents such journals fro on-line reactions to the hypotheses and scientific data presented That such publications need a shorter ti The Internet thus became the newpress-a printing press of a totally new condition Individuals constituting their identity on the Internet have access to resources which until recently were available only to those ned presses, or gained access to theed position in society

The visual coraphics, relies on the sah which the entire co takes place As a result of this coic and its new extensions), we can consider language (irams, charts, and the like), and alsothe means to overcome the limitations of literacy has dominated scientific work The newallow us to replace the routine of phenoes designed especially to help us create new theories of very complex and dynamic phenomena

The shi+ft to the visual follows the need to change the accent froe inferences based on the such evaluations at sonificant moments of the process in which we are involved Let us mention some of these processes In medicine, or in the research for syntheses of new substances, and in space research, words have proven to be not only , but also inefficient in many respects New visualization techniques, such as those based on molecular resonance, freed the praxis of medicine from the limitations of word descriptions Patients explain what they feel; physicians try to ies of disease based on data resulting from the most recent data When this process is networked, the most qualified physician can be consulted When experimental data and theoretic models are joined, the result is visualized and the inforital networks