I’ve included one quote I thought pertained to visual literacy and culture. Toffler here is talking about the way we must constantly update our ‘mental models’ of the world.

A new image that clearly fits somewhere into a subject matter slot, and which is consistent with images already stored there, gives us little difficulty. But if, as happens increasingly, the image is ambiguous, if it is inconsistent, or , worse yet, if it flies in the face of our previous inferences, the mental model has to be forcibly revised. Large numbers of images may have to be reclassified, shuffled, changed again until a suitable integration is found. Sometimes whole groups of image-structures have to be torn down and rebuilt. In extreme cases, the basic shape of the whole model has to be drastically overhauled.

Thus the mental model model must be seen not as a static library of images, but as a living entity, tightly charged with energy and activity. It is not a ‘given’ that we passively receive from the outside. Rather, it is something we actively construct and reconstruct from moment to moment. Restlessly scanning the outer world with our senses, probing for information relevant to our needs and desires, we engage in a constant process of rearrangement and updating…

It requires high energy to keep the system operating…. To maintain our adaptive balance, to keep the gap [between what we beleive and what really is] within manageable proportions, we struggle to refresh our imagery, to keep it up-to-date, to relearn reality. Thus the accelerative thrust outside us finds a corresponding speed-up in the adapting individual. Our image-processing mechanisms, whatever they may be, are driven to operate at higher and higher speeds. (Page 178-179)

I find that this passage, written some 36 years ago, is still relevant to today’s world. On page 180 Toffler goes on to conclude:

The process of image formation and classification is, in the end, a physical process, dependent upon finite characteristics of nerve cells and body chemicals. In the neural system as now constitued there are, in all likelihiood, inherent limits to the amount and speed of image processing that the individual can accomplish. How fast and how continuously can the individual revise his inner images behore he smashes up against these limits?

Nobody knows. It may well be that the limits stretch so far beyond present needs, that such gloomy speculations are unjustfied. Yet one salient fact commands attention: by speeding up change in the outer world, we compel the indivuidal to relearn his environment at every moment.

The province of Newfoundland & Labrador (in Eastern Canada) updated its provincial logo. Out is the provincial flag, in is the provincial flower; the pitcher plant.

welcome to Newfoundland!

becomes

we will eat you up!

kinna like Little Shop of Horrors

Pretty on the outside, the pitcher plant also happens to be carniverous. And everyone has a fascination for flesh-eating plants, so how can this not be a good change… Tourists are attracted to what they think is a pretty flower, but don’t realize they’ll be eaten up by hungry Newfies. I like.

On a more serious note, Fiat, the car company, has updated it’s logo.

blue blooded

becomes

red blooded

1932 logo

The introduction of red, the shield-shape embedded in a circle, and the use of the elongated font harks back to the logos the company used from the early 30s to late 60s. See here for a good overview of this history. If I wasn’t familiar with the Fiat name, I would read this logo as Firt. Don’t know if I’d want to drove a Firt.

The new logo of the Buffalo Silverbacks - a minor league basketball team - is interesting because it shows how logos can get caught up in racial politics.

gorilla with a silver back

becomes

a cat with a silver back

Team management chose to change the logo in response to criticism that their logo was rascist, portraying an angry African American as a basketball-playing gorilla. The logo, oddly enough, was created by one of the players on the team, an African American. Note that there is no such thing as a silverback tiger, or silverback cat. An entirely new species has been discovered in Buffalo.

Will these sports teams be forced to adopt the formidable silverback tiger as their emblem?

Atlanta Silverbacks, soccer

London Silverbacks, football

Miami Valley Silverbacks, indoor football

IFL Silverbacks, fighting

Basically, this summer a handful of bloggers discovered that various incidents reported by the Western media during the Israeli-Lebanese conflict of this summer had been fabricated.

original reuters photo of burning city

photoshop to add more smoke

Zombietimes deconstructs this reporting and is an excellent example of visual literacy in use. In the end Reuters was forced to apologize and fire the photographer responsible for the falsified images.

Also of interest is the extremely detailed visual autopsy of the photos claiming to portray the Red Cross Ambulance incident, I’d say this autopsy pretty well verifies that the event was staged.

the bomb hole…

actually meant for the siren

This is only a fraction of what is described on the website. For an eye-opening exercise in the analysis and deconstruction of photos, check it out.