The thing is, "text" and "pictures" are somewhat vague super-categories that aren't very well defined in a lot of comments on this thread. It's ironic that a discussion about the precision of text is noisy because of of the imprecision of text.
Are emojies text ? the blog post found a 4000-byte Twitter logo and cited this as evidence of the efficiency of text, but they forgot that there is a vast store of similary-sized photos that cost nothing more than 3 or 4 bytes and sometimes less, comparable to the very same letters they are using to write the post (and conveying much more than a single useless-on-its-own sound). By any definition that depend on the fact that text is stored as contiguous bytes, emojies ARE text.
Are 2D tables text ? they are not linear (not as we see them) yet one table with entries arranged appropriately could be much more percise and expressive than a truck-load of prose paragraphs. And an xy plot is much more expressive than both. 2D tables is not that much more expensive in storage than text though (a bunch of html tags surrounding the text is one representation), and an xy plot could be derived from a table by computation. So with a little bit of computation you gain the precision and expressiveness of a visual plot with the storage overhead of a bunch of numbers. This example (simplistically) mirrors current work in ML on compression of photos and videos. Imagine if computers are advanced enough that a picture is no more storage than an emojii, all arguments. about "efficiency" of text that appeal to its economic representation in computer memory become moot then.
The point I'm making is: "text" vs. "pictures" is not fine-grained enough of a distinction. The real distinction is [ "numbers" vs. "graphs" vs. "letters" vs. "tables" vs. ...), its a big multiway competition between various forms of symbols and symbol-organization schemas humans invented for a variety of purposes and arguments for or against any of them shouldn't appeal to how they are represented or communicated (text could be drawn on photos or arranged on powerpoint slides, images could be compressed and redrawn to a high degree of fidelity). And there is a lot of paradigms "in-between" that piggy-backs on one of the two representation but aren't either of them (plots, tables, emojies). Tools and technological limitations are also to blame for a lot of pictures' shortcomings, the ability to copy-paste being one of them.
A lot of discussions here would benefit alot if all parties state beforehand exactly what are their definition of text and what their argument appeals to in that definition.
Are emojies text ? the blog post found a 4000-byte Twitter logo and cited this as evidence of the efficiency of text, but they forgot that there is a vast store of similary-sized photos that cost nothing more than 3 or 4 bytes and sometimes less, comparable to the very same letters they are using to write the post (and conveying much more than a single useless-on-its-own sound). By any definition that depend on the fact that text is stored as contiguous bytes, emojies ARE text.
Are 2D tables text ? they are not linear (not as we see them) yet one table with entries arranged appropriately could be much more percise and expressive than a truck-load of prose paragraphs. And an xy plot is much more expressive than both. 2D tables is not that much more expensive in storage than text though (a bunch of html tags surrounding the text is one representation), and an xy plot could be derived from a table by computation. So with a little bit of computation you gain the precision and expressiveness of a visual plot with the storage overhead of a bunch of numbers. This example (simplistically) mirrors current work in ML on compression of photos and videos. Imagine if computers are advanced enough that a picture is no more storage than an emojii, all arguments. about "efficiency" of text that appeal to its economic representation in computer memory become moot then.
The point I'm making is: "text" vs. "pictures" is not fine-grained enough of a distinction. The real distinction is [ "numbers" vs. "graphs" vs. "letters" vs. "tables" vs. ...), its a big multiway competition between various forms of symbols and symbol-organization schemas humans invented for a variety of purposes and arguments for or against any of them shouldn't appeal to how they are represented or communicated (text could be drawn on photos or arranged on powerpoint slides, images could be compressed and redrawn to a high degree of fidelity). And there is a lot of paradigms "in-between" that piggy-backs on one of the two representation but aren't either of them (plots, tables, emojies). Tools and technological limitations are also to blame for a lot of pictures' shortcomings, the ability to copy-paste being one of them.
A lot of discussions here would benefit alot if all parties state beforehand exactly what are their definition of text and what their argument appeals to in that definition.