Hello to the web of images – Goodbye text (caution: philosophy ahead)

In the beginning was the word. In green writing on a black screen.

Then the images arrived.

At first they took a loooong time to load onto the page. I remember waiting some twenty minutes for a single image to render on my screen in the late summer of 1995.

At that time pictures were treated as nothing but supplements to The writing. As illustrations of whatever written content constituted the page in question.

Well of course, you might think. But this is neither a thing to be taken for granted – nor is it insignificant. Treating pictures as mere illustrations is iconic for the web as we’ve known it up until now: It’s been a written medium, build up around written communication models. To grasp the information you’d have to read, to think, to actively engage in decoding the messages.

As the broadening of bandwidth continues, pictures – and videos – loads more and more instantly. And as this takes place, the image-professionals will bring themselves to the center of the web, pushing text in the background. The text will be the supplement. Images will be king. Viewing will be dominate over reading. Emotions over thinking. Passive reactions over active decoding. And the appeal of the web will reach hitherto unprecedented levels.

Youtube, Worldofwarcraft, Flickr, Google Earthetc. already have been front-running this process. But the disruptive, centrifugal powers of images won’t let it stop there.

The thing is, that the real beginning was never in writing. It was visual. It was on display. The real beginning was what our first ancestors –  being that cave-men or apes – perceived through their eyes, the first time ever opened their eyes and perceived the world. In a time before language or any other means of communication was conceived of. Images thus became a fundamental part of the psycho-genetic makeup of man. They became the building bricks, used by the minds of the first men to build the mental construction of the world around them.

Enormous powers are in this way vested into images, being the unmediated starting point of the construction of meaning. Nowadays the images are therefore already lined up, ready to take further advantage of the technological opportunities of our modern society, as they arise. And as images leaps forward, filling up more and more of the positions, for which tech-trends continuously paves the way, they result not only in yet another victory of one communicative element (images) over another (text). With this take-over of the center of power, the communication and navigation of the web will change, and its communicative powers will – for better and worse – be turboed.

Welcome, new world of images. Goodbye, world perceived as text.