o primado da imagem prática

dicionário de poses, coisinha engraçada. e se neste momento eu alegasse diferenças irreconciliáveis?

"Television's popularity greatly increased the power of images. Iconic information has superseded alphabetic information as the single most significant cultural influence. The first modern image to achieve universal recognition was the atomic bomb's mushroom explosion. The phallic cloud billowing up over Hiroshima symbolized the unbalanced masculine. It was the climatic end result of thousands of years of left-brain dominance. The world starred slack-jawed and wide-eyed at the awesome power of hunter/killer values carried to their farthest extreme. For all their virtues, abstract science, linear words, and sequential equations had led the world to the brink of extinction."

(...)

"Over the course of history, humankind has been profoundly influenced by the periodic emergence of powerful books. Plato, Aristotle, Paul, Augustine, Mohammed, Aquinas, Galileo, Calvin, Descartes, Newton, Kant, Jefferson, Hegel, Darwin, Marx, and Freud - each stamped their age with a unique imprimatur. Since the atomic blast in 1945 and the Earth image that followed, not a single book has come close to the degree of impact these two photos have had. The written word's influence has been declining for the last fifty years, counterbalanced by the increasing power of the image."

(...)
"The effect of this image bombardment is everywhere in evidence. Dinner conversations, water-cooler schmoozing, and car-pool chit-chat are riddled with the lingo of TV, ads, sporting events, movies, and computers. References to poets and authors, common a century ago among the educated, are increasingly rare."

(...)

In recent years, homogenous print cultures that had boasted high literacy rates prior to World War II have discovered that an alarming percentage of their populations have become functionally illiterate. Educators are aghast; finger pointing and accusations are traded back and forth in the media. Most involved in the debate are unwilling to consider that in the age of the image, literacy will inevitably decline."

em Alphabet versus the Goddess, de Leonard Shlain, que quanto mais leio mais me parece um exercício retórico e de manipulação de informação. enquanto vou vendo a Alice já não mora aqui (ah, bendito príncipe-cowboy para um final feliz, quem seria ela sem orientação). e eu que penso que é pela literacia, como sempre foi e será, que posso estar aqui agora a dizer isto mesmo. como se alguma coisa anulasse outra, como se isto tudo não fosse simultâneo.