Alan Levine makes the point that the oft-repeated claim that "people process visual input 60,000 times faster than they do text" is completely unsubstantiated. I have two thoughts. First, the publication of this sort of unverified claim is a sign or marker that the publication (in this case Inc., but also Business Week and a host of similar titles) is not trustworthy. There's a lot that could be said on this theme and about media literacy generally. Second, the actual literature about textual and visual input is a lot more interesting than this superficial claim and these publications do us a disservice by misrepresenting it. I'm no expert, but I start, for example, with the question of whether what we do is even 'information processing'. For example: a thermometer measures temperature by converting the expansion and contraction of materials (most famously, mercury) into a digit (eg., the thermometer says '40 degrees C' in London, U.K.). Now, did this thermometer 'process information'? And what if human cognition is like that?
Today: 8 Total: 30 [Direct link] [Share]
