the diversity made possible by the practical experiences corresponding to this globality; 3.
the dynamics of ever faster, increasingly mediated, human interaction; 4.
the need to optimize human interaction in order to achieve high levels of efficiency; 5.
the need to overcome the arcane stereotypes of language; 6.
the non-linear, non-sequential, open nature of human experiences brought to the fore through the new scale of humankind.
The list is open-ended. The more our command of images improves, the more arguments in favor of their use. None of these arguments should be construed as a blank and non-critical endorsement of images. We know that we cannot pursue theoretic work exclusively with images, or that the meta-level (language about language) cannot be reached with images. Images are factual, situational, and unstable. They also convey a false sense of democracy. Moreover, they materialize the shift from a positivist conception of facts, dominating a literacy-based determinism, to a relativist conception of chaotic functioning, embodied, for instance, by the market or by the new means and methods of human interaction. However, until we learn all there is to know about the potential of images in areas other than art, architecture, and design, chances are that we shall not understand their participation in thinking and in other traditionally non-image-based forms of human praxis.
Images are very powerful agents for activities involving human emotions and instincts. They shy away from literal truth, insofar as the logic of images is different from the logic inhabiting human experiences of self-constitution in language. Imagery has a protean character. Images not only represent; they actually shape, form, and constitute subjects. Cognitive processes of association are better supported visually than in language. Through images, people are effectively encultured, i.e., given the identity which they cannot experience at the abstract level of acculturation through language. The world of avatars, dynamic graphic representations of a person in the virtual universe of networks, is one of concreteness. The individuals literally remake themselves as visual entities that can enter a dialogue with others.
Within a given culture, images relate to each other. In the multitude of cultures within which people identify themselves, images translate from one experience to another. Against the background of globality, the experience of images is one of simultaneous distinctions and integration. Distinctions carry the identifiers of the encultured human beings constituted in new practical experiences. Integration is probably best exemplified by the metaphor of the global village of teleconnections and tele-viewing, of Internet and World Wide Web interactions.
The characteristics of images given here so far need to be related to the perspective of changes brought about by imaging technologies. Otherwise, we could hardly come to understand how images constitute languages that make literacy useless, or better yet, that result in the need for complementary partial literacies.
The mechanical eye and the electronic eye