But I betcha you can't find one that clearly says what seven little words of text do. Which goes to show that those seven little words are a lie.
For the record, I came up with this thought, about computers and software being optimized for text, by realizing I learned the best by reading information presented as a combination of text and media (e.g., a textbook with diagrams), but when I communicate with a computer, I always just use text, why? Well, making media with a computer is a huge PITA, I'm assuming because you program the computer itself with text, so its entire interface seems optimized for that. (This is particularly interesting looking in contrast to smartphones and tablets, which are entirely not optimized for text.)
We have tons of tech now: audio, video, charting, etc.
Circles are pretty easy in powerpoint or any such software.
The tech is obviously here already.
But still, why do people prefer sending chat texts instead of calling or video calling? Surely not because of tech.
It turns out that people who are highly fluent in a language with a compact alphabet like English prefer sending text chats. My Chinese colleagues and friends routinely send many more voice chat messages than text because it is much more efficient than typing mandarin.
Also in India, I've observed that people fluent in vernacular but not in written English primarily send voice chat messages - again because the vernacular text input is very inefficient
So interestingly does my daughter who can type English text easily but as she always grew up in a world her parents and her friends parents had smartphones, she finds it a lot more comfortable to send voice chat messages.
The other benefit of chat is asynchronocity. You're not forcing the other party to do a context switch and signalling that they can get to ot.
You do realize how cumbersome that mobile keyboard is right. With a click of a button, you can record audio and/or video.
But still, text messages rule them all.
Who sends texts on desktops anyway? A small minority.
Yet another argument in favor of text.
To this day, this complexity is still mostly offloaded to users in the form of export settings, and supported playback formats. One basic requirement of the technology reaching the point good media support is if a user never encounters codecs, in either export settings or playback problems.
I don't know in which world or time you are living, it's been a long time since I touch anything related to codecs.
But particularly on the creation side, if you say, try and combine a vector created in one program with a bitmap created in another, you'll likely encounter some issues (e.g., color profiles), or taking an animation created in one program and overlaying it over a video in another, you'll often need to know your codecs. Or exporting a video optimized for social media, e.g., videos shared on Instagram and Twitter often have heavy compression artifacts.
I'm really looking for seamless creation and sharing freely combining media from different programs, with the same ease as cut, pasting, and editing text. (As well as interfaces that are as easy to use as manipulating pen and paper with your hands.)
This isn't universally true. I (unfortunately, for me, since I hate it personally) know plenty of people who prefer voice or video calls. I even have people who will reply with voice recordings to my text messages.
Many people prefer voice or video.
I prefer text because of two main reasons:
1. Its asynchronous. I can reply as needed while not being disturbed if I happen to be in the middle of something.
2. Its not real time. That is, I can take my time to form my response. I can proof read, edit, clearly form my thoughts etc. In a voice/video recording, editing is difficult, in a live setting, I'm under more time pressure to finish my sentences rather than thinking about them more.
I don't prefer text because of technology reasons, except those that make text more asynchronous and easier to proof read and edit.
But many people I know or have interacted with hate text and prefer voice or video.
It seems pretty obvious to me that text, video, audio, and images are good for different things, and that diversity is reflected in the ecosystem. There isn't a universal trend towards or away from text, not really. People are making fewer voice calls, but they're also consuming more content on Youtube instead of on blogs. They're also moving a lot of their social life onto platforms like TikTok and Instagram, which are primarily video/image.
I don't see a universal trend here in either direction. I think people are cherry-picking a couple of isolated trends or points and making really broad, generalized statements that aren't warranted.
The whole idea of picking a "best" medium here is silly anyway. It's childish, in the same way that people used to argue about whether books, movies, or games were the 'best' artistic medium. Different mediums are good for different things.
- If I'm busy right now I don't need to stop what I'm doing to answer the call, or you don't need to try again later.
- Need 2 minutes to look up your schedule and suggest a time or find a restaurant? That's fine, I can do something else until you reply and you don't feel like you need to rush the process.
- 6 hours later I forgot which restaurant we agreed on? It's ok, just open the chat, it's right there.
- The chat is searchable, if 2 months later I don't remember the restaurant name I can probably find in a few seconds by searching some related keywords like "food", "restaurant", "dinner", etc.
Voice notes, like email, are fully async and require actually listening to someone talk, which changes the communication media that you're working in.
Messaging has risen to the prevalence it has because of the features it brings to the table, not in spite of them.
- you send me a picture, it may be ambiguous;
- you leave me a voice call, I have to go out of the meeting room to listen to it
- you write a message, it just works. If there is info to use, I will easily copy your message in any application (Excel, Word, SAP...).
Also, text can be stored easily, so I will keep an archive of your text, probably far less an archive of your voice message or diagram, as they are very heavy.
http://35.161.88.15/interactive/going-critical/
There is something about playing with the sliders and watching that plague die out and flare up, that makes the point with a vividness beyond words.
Words have a near arbitrary level of abstraction, so that single words can convey immense collections of ideas, so much so that new words can be defined that represent the ideas that would otherwise take many words to express.
Take using a computer to type a word versus draw a picture: Effectively everyone who uses a computer can type a word, but I'd bet less than 10% could draw a circle.
But put a piece of paper in front of someone and effectively everyone can draw a circle.
This points to there being a limitation in the technology for working with other forms of media, not the effectiveness of the communication medium itself.
This isn't to say that text isn't also a better communication medium, but it is to say, until the technology has improved for communicating with other media, it's difficult to compare without basing the decision on the limitations of the technology.
In other words, most of the perceived advantages of text are really advantages of text being easier to represent digitally (or generally reproduced, e.g., printing press), not advantages of text as a communication medium itself.