Somewhere, yesterday, I read something to the effect that:
If a picture is worth a thousand words, how come nobody’s yet painted a picture which says that?
While I was in the shower in my usual semi-concious state this morning, all sorts of developments of this idea started popping into my head. Like:
- Maybe pictures have a kind of minimum efficient transfer unit size, and are only useful for concepts of a thousand words or more.
- Maybe pictures are just not good for meta-information?
- Is a video programme worth a thousand audio programmes? I think not. Does this disprove the rule?
- Is the ease of depicting a concept pictorially inversely proportional to the number of words needed to describe it?
Of course, some might argue that any good picture is not only worth a thousand words, but implicitly conveys the subtext that a picture is worth a thousand words, and hence nobody needs to spell it out explicitly!
Mmm. Time for bed…
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