19.088 visual imagination

                Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 19, No. 88.
       Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
                   www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/humanist/
                        www.princeton.edu/humanist/
                     Submit to: humanist_at_princeton.edu

   [1] From: Eric Rochester <erochest_at_gmail.com> (9)
         Subject: Re: 19.083 visual imagination

   [2] From: njovanov_at_ffzg.hr (11)
         Subject: Re: visual imagination

--[1]------------------------------------------------------------------
         Date: Thu, 09 Jun 2005 07:58:50 +0100
         From: Eric Rochester <erochest_at_gmail.com>
         Subject: Re: 19.083 visual imagination

Like Steve, I'm very visually oriented. But I'm often skeptical of
attempts to make things more "graphical" in computer interfaces
(particularly tools like visual programming). Partially, I'm sure,
this is the result of learning computers without a GUI, but also I'm
aware of the limitations of thinking visually. Although certain kinds
of information are best expressed graphically, and certain kinds of
computer interaction are best mediated by GUIs, for flexibility and
power, words (or a command line) cannot be beaten.

Eric Rochester

--[2]------------------------------------------------------------------
         Date: Thu, 09 Jun 2005 08:00:15 +0100
         From: njovanov_at_ffzg.hr
         Subject: Re: visual imagination

Recently I become aware how text- or verbal-oriented the internet is; I
tried to identify an 15th century bookseller with a book for the emblem.
Seems like a trivial task, but it isn't --- if you're just an user, not a
specialist bibliographer / art historian. The same goes for music ---
ever tried locating a song when you don't know the title, or the artist,
or the composer (internet helps a little when the lyrics are there, *if*
the lyrics are in English --- but what about remembering just a musical
phrase?) Of course the vocabulary to describe colours and lines and
motifs and tones exists --- but it seems not to be easily searchable
(universal enough?) in the world of computing.
Neven
Received on Thu Jun 09 2005 - 03:12:22 EDT