The main problem with visual mediums is that it infects the most serious discourse with the values of a sideshow. It's no wonder people trot out half baked ideas on population and climate change.

They've been educated through a medium that uses canned laughter as part of its appeal. Then again, I think we place too much importance on education fixing every social ill.

The author sails close to some elitist views of text over image but generally makes a pretty good case for grounding the argument in the empistemology of the word or Logos.

The reason why 15 year olds can't remember history is that they were never taught it in the first place.

Malcolm King article + Sentimental drivel based on ignorance =nothing to see here folks, nothing to see here.

Cheryl, did you see the Dick Smith ego-published population program a couple of weeks ago? It was a perfect example of what you're describing, with every visual cliche in the book - pictures of teeming Bangladeshi streets and the quater-acre block of Dick's "humble" childhood home

Hi Rhian, yes I saw it. I don't mind my emotional chain being yanked for a good cause such as feeding people but I'm less keen on having my chain yanked for 'offing people' in the developing world.

King's article is pretty much straight forward Neil Postman from the 80s, who ripped off the ideas of Joshua Meyrowitz who wrote 'No Sense of Place' but it goes some way to explaining why many people point to images when they try to use serious discourse.

If you plonk children down in front of a TV for five years, without any parental guidance, you'll get frightened kids who think we're being over populated or some other such fantasy.

Basically, if you feed people images without any context and 'facts', you'll the equivalent of an hyper-emotional PowerPoint display. It's the same technique that has been used to get men to fight in wars and even to go all mushy when they hear the music to Born Free.

It's mental fairy floss.

Hieroglyphics have been around for many thousands of years.

What is new is the ready access to large amounts of information that was often locked away in some fault or library in the past.

Does this make remembering information redundant.

Not quite I would think, but remembering information for the sake of remembering information is now redundant.

Not sure why the "net" is joined to TV in this article ("TV-net").
The "net" is TV's arch enemy and despite the traditional media's attempt to curtail it, it has thus far not succeeded. (Conroy hasn't given up being the champion of re-centralised information management however.)
Why was Google so successful?
Unlike other search engines who sought to use a paid model with humans trying to rank and sort web sites, Google used an algorithm: A set of rules so that computer software could do the task automatically. Other engines partially used algorithms that relied on "metadata" (data about data), but this assumed that website designers would honestly represented their site content...not a good assumption!
The worst thing though was the influence that paid for links had on search results. Basically: Google indexed the net, others were a portal for paid advertisement regardless of applicability. (A bit like commercial TV)
Google's method is not perfect but uses the fact that people are lazy and would rather link to an authoritative source than re-create the content. This means the "page rank" system effectively captures "crowd intelligence" by averaging the links to a page, and the links to the pages that link...
People are currently winging that Google is too powerful. The answer is simple: Do it better. Google got big by doing the job properly for the consumer, and by doing so becoming the only game in town. Contrast this with Microsoft, who got a technology monopoly then used massive legal grunt to bankrupt the tech companies they stole from.
The real beef with Google is commercial: They are giving away what others would like to charge for: accurate maps, accurate web search, accurate information. The profiteers are not happy!
BTW. Reading is not dead. Real understanding has always been a minority activity. True the banality of TV is stunning, but the written word is still living.