Speak Softly and Post a Lot of Pics

In case you hadn't heard: text is out, photos are in. So in that spirit, I gathered and arranged the photos below to tell a story.

If you can't figure out what I was trying to say, you're not alone. Photos without any context are hard to understand. That's because, as Neicole Crepau of Clipsi.com points out: "civilization thrived when humans moved from pictographs to the written word." The written word, she explains "enabled humans to convey the same information faster and in a much smaller space."

Once language developed, it revolutionized communication, allowing us to learn by reading words. And today, those who read novels have been shown to develop greater empathy and interpret social cues more quickly. In one study, people who read novels were better at reading people's emotions just by looking at photos of their eyes. Now while that study was comparing fiction and nonfiction readers, it still shows the tremendous benefits that the written word has had for understanding images. (For more on this research, check out this article by psychologist Keith Oatley).

So  to sum up: don't give up on text. It's gotten us quite far, and it's here to stay. And if you are wondering what I was trying to say in the images above, here it is: It's sad that the world of writing is dying, and a galaxy of photos is taking its place. (If you didn't get that, I completely understand. I have to work on my pictography:)