A recent Breitbart article mentions how video is driving a current boom in Internet use.
Video overcomes barriers of language, local content and literacy, he [Robert Pepper, a vice president of Cisco] said, allowing users to interact more easily with the Internet.
My problem with this paraphrase (who knows what he actually said?) is that it lists literacy among "barriers."
Literacy is not a barrier. Illiteracy is the barrier.
Literacy is freedom. It is a pathway. A vehicle. A liberating force that gives power to its possessor.
Illiteracy is a fetter, a shackle, a limitation on human potential.
The rise of visual culture threatens to thrust us into a pre-verbal age. It poses as a pseudo-freedom of expression.
This isn't to say that the visual arts as such can't be beautiful, expressive, or informative. Plus, written text is, after all, a means of visual expression.
But there are ideas and thoughts that are too complex (or perhaps too important) to be adequately conveyed without the use of formal language.
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