The Internet enables the message: July 15, 1996 issue of New Thinking

July 15, 1996 New Thinking:
The Internet enables the message

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July 15, 1996

The Internet enables the message

By Gerry McGovern

In the beginning there was too much bandwidth.

Something had to be done. The world was simply too large. We needed to compress so that we could bring it under control. In caves we drew pictures of animals we hunted. That was a compression technique.

We made those pictures smaller and joined them in sequences so that we could communicate more efficiently. Doing this enabled us to control the world more, shape it, make more tools out of it.

There came a time for many when images were too cumbersome a communication process. So we created letters and numbers, reaching advanced levels of compression.

Our minds worked as decompressers. When someone says ‘door,’ you don’t see the letters “d o o r.” Rather you see, often subliminally, a large, wooden, rectangular object.

Twenty six letters to describe everything is an incredible act of compression. However, we live in a visual world and we are visual, sensory animals at heart. We like images. Pictures paint a thousand words for us.

Film and television came. The world flowed into our homes through a neat box. We now could watch a lion in Africa rather than read about it. We could watch a political leader -- and read their body language -- instead of having to read between the lines of their words.

Think of music. What would music be today without video? It would still be music. But now a good video can sell a bad song. In fact, a song is not a song for the MTV generation unless it is a video.

A company that wants to impress must have its corporate ‘n’ roll video. Plans for a building complex need to be animated before they can be sold to investors. In the wired world, words are stretched and soaked in color to help them squeeze out more oomph.

We were swimming towards the 21st Century in a sea of visuals. We were in danger of swimming and swimming and perhaps drowning before we reach the dry land of meaning.

And then along comes the Internet with its lack of bandwidth, forcing us to recognize that some of the pictures which paint a thousand words have come to take up a file size of ten thousand.

Limitations are never what they seem. Lack of bandwidth can teach us why we invented letters and numbers in the first place. It can help us revisit the question: What is the message?

If you have something to say, the Internet does not restrict you that much. If you have something of value to trade, the Internet does not greatly limit you in selling it, or at least providing information on it.

Like the time when we first discovered the alphabet, we should realize the huge power of words and numbers. Sure, they do not contain all meaning, but they have a potential often neglected in an age increasingly drowning in visual illusions.

If perhaps for only a brief period, the Internet enables the message.

Gerry McGovern

Next issue: Land of imaginations
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Like the time when we first discovered the alphabet, we should realize the huge power of words and numbers.