With a hypertextual diskette books are supposed to become obsolete. If you even consider that

a hypertext is usually also multimedial, the complete hypertextual diskette will in the next future

replace not only books but also videocassettes and many other supports.

Now we must ask ourselves if such a perspective is a realistic one or is mere science-fiction -

as well as if the distinction we have just outlined between visual and alphabetic communication,

books and hypertexts is really that simple. Let me list a series of problems and possible perspectives for our future.

Even after the invention of printing books have never been the only instrument for acquiring

information. There were paintings, popular printed images, oral teaching, and so on. One can

say that books were in any case the most important instrument for transmitting scientifical

information, including news about historical events. In this sense they were the paramount

instrument used in schools.

With the diffusion of the various mass media, from cinema to television, something has changed.

Years ago the only way to learn a foreign language (outside of traveling abroad) was to study a

language from a book. Now our kids frequently know other languages by listening to records,

by watching movies in the original edition, by deciphering the instructions printed on a beverage

can. The same happens with geographical information. In my childhood I got the best of my

information about exotic countries not from textbooks but by reading adventure novels

(Jules Verne, for instance). My kids very early knew more than me on the same subjects from

watching TV and movies. One could learn very well the story of the Roman Empire through

movies, provided that movies were historically correct. The fault of Hollywood is not to have

opposed its movies to the books of Tacitus or of Gibbon, but rather to have imposed a pulp-

and romance-like version on both Tacitus and Gibbon.

A good educational tv program (not to speak of a CD-ROM) can explain genetics better than a

book.

Today the concept of literacy comprises many media. An enlightened policy of literacy must take

into account the possibilities of all of these media. Educational preoccupation must be extended

to the whole of media. Responsibilities and tasks must be carefully balanced. If for learning

languages, tapes are better than books, take care of cassettes. If a presentation of Chopin, with

commentary on compact disks, helps people to understand Chopin, don't worry if people do not

buy five volumes of the history of music.

Even if it were true that today visual communication overwhelms written communication, the

problem is not to oppose written to visual communication. The problem is how to improve both.

In the Middle Ages visual communication was, for the masses, more important than writing.

But Chartres Cathedral was not culturally inferior to the Imago Mundi of Honorius of Autun.

Cathedrals were the TV of those times, and the difference from our TV was that the directors of

the medieval TV --read: good books-- had a lot of imagination, and worked for the public profit

(or, at least, for what they believed to be public profit).

The real problems lay elsewhere. Visual communication has to be balanced with the verbal one,

and mainly with the written one for a precise reason. Once, a semiotician, Sol Worth, wrote a

paper, "Images cannot say Ain't". I can verbally say "Unicorns do not exist" but if I show the

image of a unicorn the unicorn is there. Moreover, is the unicorn I see a unicorn or the unicorn,

that is, does it stand for a given unicorn or for the unicorns in general?

This problem is not as immaterial as it can seem, and many many pages have been written by

logicians and semioticians on the difference between such expressions as a child, the child, this

child, all children, childhood as a general idea. Such distinctions are not so easy to display

through images. Nelson Goodman in his Languages of Art wondered if a picture representing a

woman

is the representation of Women in general, the portrait of a given woman, the example of the

general characteristics of a woman, the equivalent of the statement there is a woman looking at

me.

One can say that in a poster or on an illustrated book, the caption or other forms of written

material can help to understand what the image means. But I want to remind you about a

rhetorical device called example, on which Aristotle spent some interesting pages. In order to

convince somebody about a given matter, the most convincing is a proof by induction. In

induction I provide many cases and then I infer that probably they instantiate a general law.

Suppose I want to demonstrate that dogs are friendly and love their masters: I provided many

cases in which a dog has proved to be friendly and helpful and I suggest that there must be a

general law by which every animal belonging to the species of dogs is friendly.

Suppose now I want to persuade you that dogs are dangerous. I can do this by providing you

with an example: "Once, a dog killed its master...." As you easily understand, a single case does

not prove anything, but if the example is shocking I can surreptitiously suggest that dogs can

even be unfriendly, and once you are convinced that it can be so, I can unduly extrapolate a

law from a single case and conclude: "this means that dogs cannot be trusted." With the

rhetorical use of the example I shift from a dog to all dogs.

If you have a critical mind you can realize that I have manipulated a verbal expression (a dog

was bad) so to transform it into another one (all dogs are bad) which does not mean the same

thing. But if the example is a visual rather than a verbal one, the critical reaction is made more

difficult. If I show you the poignant image of a given dog biting its master it is very difficult to

discriminate between a particular and a general statement. It is easy to take that dog as the

representative of its species. Images have, so to speak, a sort of Platonic power: they transform

individuals into general ideas.

Thus by a purely visual communication and education it is easier to implement persuasive

strategies that reduce our critical power. If I read on a newspaper that a given man said "we

want mister X as president" I am aware that I was given the opinion of a given man. But if I

watch on the TV screen a man saying enthusiastically "we want mister X as president" it is

easier to take the will of that individual as the example of the general will.

[continued...]