THE TEXT REVOLUTION (Como las palabras empiezan apenas a hacer parte de la evolución)
Gerry McGovern
People are writing and reading more than they ever have. From
websites to mobile phones, we are witnessing a second text
revolution, where the power of the word is again dominating our
culture and economy.
Because so many words are written every day, it is easy to forget
the potential power of words. I'm reading a book at the moment
where Bill Gates' conversion to the Internet is discussed. It is
accepted that Gates 'got it' about the importance of the Internet
in 1995, then wrote what would become known as 'The Memo.' This
eight-page document set out a new strategy for Microsoft.
Everyone that mattered in Microsoft read it, and made sure they
got it. Eight pages turned a super-tanker around.
The Text Generation is all around us. Billions of text messages
are being sent over mobile phones. Nobody predicted it. It just
happened. Young people took to words and created a new fashion and
craze. How could words become so cool?
Words are cool because they are intensely human. In so many areas,
computers are doing what people do in a more efficient and cost-
effective manner. Numbers have long been better manipulated by
calculators. Anything that is logical, that has a process that can
be automated, is being automated.
Words, on the other hand, are still more an art than a science.
A quality sentence is always a challenge. Twenty people see the
same event and they will all write different versions of what
happened. Our sentences and paragraphs will be the last thing to
be truly automated, which means that they will be an area where
humans will and must continue to excel.
The irony is that technology for most of the Twentieth Century
greatly diminished the power of words. It was only with the
emergence of the Internet and text messaging on mobile phones
that words have surged forward again as the principal way by
which we communicate.
Humans are essentially sensory. For millions of years we lived
with our eyes, our noses, our ears. Our ears did not hear
languages, but rather sounds. Language is only a recent
invention in human evolution. Written language is even more
recent. The majority of people, given the choice, would prefer
the sensory over the written. This is why television triumphed.
This is why film stars are the new royalty.
While bandwidth constraints remain, the Internet returns us to
an almost 'pre-television' world, where text rides high. The
Internet and the mobile phone are in many ways 'primitive'
tools. Certainly measured against the 'high bandwidth' delivery
of television, video and film, they are hugely restrictive.
That's why words work so well online. You see, words are in
themselves compression techniques for communication. They are
compressed even more by teenagers who squeeze the maximum
communication out of the minimum number of letters.
We have found ourselves, if only temporarily, in a low
bandwidth world, with new opportunities to communicate. Those
of us who wish to succeed need to become better with words. We
need to be able to write better so that our words have more of
a chance to rise above the massive traffic jam of words that
the world has become.
We are living through a Text Revolution. In such a revolution,
it is worth keeping Benjamin Franklin's words in mind: "Give
me 26 lead soldiers, and I will conquer the world."
