The Global Impact of Digital Display Technology (from April 1997) Throughout history, humans have created various methods of displaying information. We have invented drawing and writing to store information and to carry information to others. Because technology is now a major part of our culture, the need to carry information between people and machines has become very important. Of the human senses, the greatest amount of information can be transmitted to the brain by the eyes. The eye can adapt to varying amounts of darkness, movement, and depth. Each eye has the ability to focus light on 125 million rods and cones, or light receptors. The enormous amount of light and color information captured by the eye is carried in parallel to the brain via the optic nerve. This high-bandwidth pathway makes human vision ideal for communications from machines to humans. Therefore, electronic displays take advantage of the most effective of the human senses. Due to the large amount of computer information now available, the need to display dynamic, changing information has become important. Another development has been graphic information displays. In some cases, people can see and react faster to pictures, lights, or colors than the equivalent information expressed in words. This trend is especially evident in computer software, which now uses various icons and graphic metaphors to represent commands or complex information. Another reason for using graphics instead of text is to increase the globalization of software packages. It is more profitable to create software packages that use graphics and can be used by people who speak any language, rather than creating language-dependent text-based software which cannot be sold worldwide. One major effect of this is that American software companies have created a cultural imperialism of information technologies, similar to the cultural imperialism of some types of mass media. | |
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