A picture is worth a thoudand words, so goes the adage but I prefer the thousand words for the picture.

Written words have a magic of weaving their own imaginative world in our brain. It is free of visual bias and allows each and every individual visualize in her or his own way. You can't do that with a picture. A picture embeds the visual in our mind and we cannot think beyond it.

Visuals have their place and are effective when used within that ambit. Words are forever green and can be used in most places.

A student for instance is better advised to read text and make up her own visuals rather than watch a video and learn.

Visuals used to be complementary to text for a reason. The details you can get from a well written text cannot be communicated via a visual.

I remember reading about the NASA's Space Shuttle, Challenger, disaster investigations in which the committee investigating the disaster criticised the use of Powerpoint as a tool to communicate engineering information. Famous design Guru, Edward Tufte, has an elaborate post about this which is a treat to read (https://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=0001yB). Apparently, because of the way a Powerpoint presentation is structured, the engineers in NASA could not highlight the points that needed to be brought upfront. Since then NASA is said to prefer a detailed text report rather than a Powerpoint presentation.

There is more evidence of the power of plain text. Jeff Bezos has established a now well documented tradition of preparing a document brief by anyone who wants to convene a meeting. The document is circulated to everyone who is invited for the meeting. Everyone attending the meeting is expected to have read the document and be prepared for a discussion.

I see a new trend that has taken root. It started with short bullet points as a substitue for long text. Short Twitter sized posts. And nowadays Insta stories or Tiktok shorts. All are designed to satiate the immediate, casual audience but none to create a long term memory and curiosity to discover more.

If you think what I am saying makes sense then share this blog with your friends and lets inculcate the habit of reading and writing text again.