February 12, 2005
Words are Pictures Too
The saying "a picture is worth a thousand words" is a hotly contested topic on the Internet. Is a picture worth more a thousand words? Is it worth less? Can they be equivalent? My guess is that the answers and question will be around for at least a few more centuries, or for as long as academics are around.
Before there were home pages, there were simple 'finger' entries for each user on a computer system. You would 'finger' new acquaintances to get their office telephone number, full name, last time they logged-in, and a few other tidbits. A favorite activity during this period was to look at people's 'plan' information when 'fingering' them (in 2005, the process sounds slightly barbaric). If you are running Mac OSX you can still do this, but you're likely to only be able to finger yourself:
unix% finger maeda
Login: maeda Name: John Maeda
Directory: /Users/maeda Shell: /bin/bash
On since Sat 12 Feb 09:56 (EST) on ttyp1
No Plan.
unix%
Note that I have "No Plan." How embarrassing! Let me remedy that.
unix% cat > .plan
I want to be a better person.
unix%
Now when I finger myself:
unix% finger maeda
Login: maeda Name: John Maeda
Directory: /Users/maeda Shell: /bin/bash
On since Sat 12 Feb 09:56 (EST) on ttyp1
I want to be a better person.
unix%
Setting your ".plan" file in a variety of mischievous ways was a hobby for many people with nothing better to do on a Saturday evening. One of my favorites was the following .plan:
unix% cat > .plan
No Plan.
You have new mail.
unix%
Back then we didn't have mail applications that would beep or let us know we had e-mail waiting for us. Come to think of it, we didn't have spam either ... what a concept. Anyways, you would know you had e-mail if the system told you "You have new mail." The beauty of the above .plan file is that fingering him or her would lead to e-mail confusion.
unix% finger maeda
Login: maeda Name: John Maeda
Directory: /Users/maeda Shell: /bin/bash
On since Sat 12 Feb 09:56 (EST) on ttyp1
No Plan.
You have new mail.
unix%
Your immediate reaction would be to run 'mail' to discover that you had no mail at all. And then at that moment you would know that you had been hacked. I think the more proper word today is to be Ashton Kucher "punked" ... but I think his methods of subversion are less subtle. I'd be curious to see a spin-off of his show around UNIX hacks.
When I was an undergraduate, I once fingered then Media Lab graduate student Steve Strassman. Steve invented a painting system that emulated the imperfection of Chinese brush paintings on the computer at a time when everyone was obsessed with perfection: perfect emulation of light, perfect emulation of shiny surfaces, perfect modeling of skin, and so forth. Steve's work was unique becaues it went in the exact opposite direction of imperfection. This work is what really inspired me to be at the Media Lab long ago. Am I saying that the Media Lab is imperfect? I've come to realize that all wonderful things in life are wonderfully imperfect.
Anyways, Steve's .plan was unique. It was something like, "A picture is worth a thousand words. But it takes words to say that." I'm not sure if this is a unique quote to Steve, but it certainly gave me thought. And it continues to do so.
On a visit to Getty Images last week, I heard of how advertising companies are increasingly getting rid of words and choosing to use standalone images for the majority of branding communications. This trend certainly puts stock photo companies in a good position. But you already see it anywhere in PowerPoint presentations with copious Googled images pasted haphazardly throughout a narrative. I wonder at what point in time humans became incapable of comprehending "cat" without seeing a picture of a random cute "cat," or "sports" without seeing a picture of someone's bedroom with tennis rackets hanging on the wall.
Words are pictures too. They are just better than pictures sometimes. I can't imagine how I'd describe "word" with a picture that wasn't a word. It seems that the simpler the word, the more difficult it is to capture its essence as a picture. And it did take words for me to say that.
Thoughts On Simplicity By John Maeda