phyllostachys 70: Minute Tech 55 Show Transcript

55 - Are Pictures the Best Communications Medium?

Good day to you all, this is Alex Landefeld with episode 55 of the Minute Tech podcast -

coming to you for Thursday & Friday, December 20th and 21st, 2007

On this tech podcast about the broader meanings of technology, we'll mention:

- New Zealand quakes, ThinkSecret crumbles & DoubleClick is Gobbled;
- Are Pictures the Best Communications Medium?
- Anna Farmery asks Mark Sanborn to describe confidence.

---------------

Minute Tech podcast is brought to you in part by:

Larry Tolbert's Sunday Morning Taiji - learning tai chi and qi gong 9:30 am every Sunday morning at the Dunamis Baptist Church, in Wilkinsburg, PA. "Move with the motion of the planet - move with Taiji" - e-mail leonardtolbert-[at]-hotmail-[dot]-com for more info.

And:

Ravelings, by Carol. Pittsburgh-region classes in needle-craft - encompassing crochet, embroidery, knitting, & tatting, as well as an associated lace collection. For more information, contact Carol at carolb207-[at]-alltel-[dot]-net.

Show note: I've been dealing with a slight cold this week, and it'll be really evident today as it's settling in my throat. Vitamin C has been my cold-fighting diet additive for this bout - may each of you make it successfully through your respective ailments, too, this holiday season. :-) Due to the two-day delay on this 'cast, you may note that this news is somewhat dated...but perhaps you don't troll the same news feeds as I.

Tech News:

On a different part of the ring of fire from the Aleutian islands, an earth temblor has rocked part of New Zealand. The Associated Press reports that a magnitude 6.8 earthquake centered some 40 km below the surface of the Hikurangi undersea trench shook all of mainland New Zealand, causing much structural damage in Wellington, though with no immediate reports of injuries.

Seth Sutel, writing for the AP, reports that Apple, Inc. settled an industrial secrets-disseminating lawsuit with ThinkSecret.com owner Nick Ciarelli, resulting in the shutdown of the popular Apple rumor site. Having started the site in 1998 at the age of 13, Ciarelli is okay with the amicable settlement reached, saying that he'll now be able to focus more on his studies at Harvard.

Finally, CNBC reports that the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has given the green light to Google's acquisition of internet advertisement company DoubleClick. Named for the action used by a computer user to open a program on a Windows PC, DoubleClick has been the target of a Google purchase bid. The FTC is reported to have said that "We have concluded that Google’s proposed acquisition of DoubleClick is unlikely to substantially lessen competition." Google competitors such as Yahoo! and Amazon would probably differ with that declaration.

Tech Question: Are Pictures the Best Communications Medium?

In the last few shows I've discussed other "bests" for a communications medium, or a method by which one person communicates with another. The human voice has been with us for millions of years; text in some form has been around for 15 or 20,000 years; audio, which we know as a mechanically recorded or electronically amplified form of the human voice, has been around for 100+ years. What about pictures?

Well, in my definition of text, I included pictures as used by story tellers to help describe a narrative, such as hunters killing the animals to be used for the evening meal and for creating sleeping blankets and tent walls. But a picture is generally used to describe something that the picture directly depicts, unlike textual pictures which can take on meanings beyond their artistic rendering. In the same sense that Helen of Troy's face launched a thousand ships, a picture can take the place of a thousand words...hence the similar saying "a picture is worth a thousand words"; a textual picture, on the other hand, is designed to be used as a character in a string of like pictures to construct an alphabetic language.

In this sense, wherein a picture can depict thousands of words, rather than being one symbol in a string to compose a word, a picture could be considered a far better communications medium than text...except for two things: it's not adaptable beyond it's usual 2D depiction, and it's only useful for those who can see it - that is, our vision-impaired brothers and sisters would have a hard time getting information from a 2D picture. But, for those of us able to use our eyes as light-gathering, shape-defining devices, pictures can communicate tons of information.

Take, for example, a picture of a flower in a vase: the picture itself will convey many meanings.
- Is it a photograph? If so, can you tell what photographic process the photographer may have used? Remember, printing a digital print on color printer is still a rendering process for a photograph...we've just made it more pedestrian, more plebeian through our everyday use of technology.
- Is it a painting? If so, of what artistic style?
- Of what form is the vase? is it representative of the artists era, or no?
- Of what form is the flower? Dried? Living? From a cactus or from an orchid?
- In what setting is the flower and vase? Is it a still life of just the flower and vase, or is it in a room or setting relevant to the painter, or relative to the idea that the painter is attempting to depict? For example, is the room a 16th century monestary, or a 24th century room on the Starship Enterprise? Either setting suggest oodles of related information, far beyond the existence of the flower in the vase.

Are Pictures, therefore, the Best Communications Method?

Podcasting - Blogging News:

I was going to wax podcastific on one of Gregory Galant's recent Venture Voice interviews...but the interview by Anna Farmery on her Engaging Brand podcast #130 with Mark Sanborn sticks way too deeply in the mud of my mind. Mark is the author of several books including the "Fred Factor" and "You Don't Need a Title to Be a Leader"...and has made a name for himself in public speaking...which shines right through in Anna's interview. One interesting comment he makes about Anna is that she is skilled at looking at a subject and discerning the right questions to ask to draw out an interviewee, suggesting that soft skills like this are the unsung qualities of a leader, rather than the technical skills of building product or cracking a proverbial whip. Both Mark and Anna agree that in organizations we too often don't invite leaders to lead, but just manage. One of the qualities that can help you learn to lead is to recognize and point out to colleagues qualities about their personalities or work habits that shine, although the person may take that quality for granted. It's recognizing these qualities in others and then bringing these qualities to bear on a business situation that marks a person who can lead rather than manage, who can coach rather than brow-beat, who can direct rather than micro-manage.

In this interview about "confidence", Sanborn states that "confidence is competence coupled with certainty" - he explains this with a word picture about skiing down an expert mountain slope, wherein coupled with certainty that you'll make it to the bottom intact, you'd better have the competence to keep yourself upright on your ski's. Please listen to this podcast to learn more about how Sanborn speaks, and how well Anna interacts with him.

...

Thats all for today on Minute Tech podcast.
you can reach me at minutetech@gmail.com -
and my blog is at minutetech.blogspot.com

"Move with the motion of the planet - move with Taiji"

- New Zealand quakes, ThinkSecret crumbles & DoubleClick is Gobbled;
- Are Pictures the Best Communications Medium?
- Anna Farmery asks Mark Sanborn to describe confidence.

Go to the Minute Tech iWeb page to subscribe or listen to this podcast: Minute Tech.

Interstitial music by Apple & Bre Pettis