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Recommended Reading
Visual Language: Global Communication for the 21st Century
Robert E. Horn
MacroVU Press, 1999
ISBN 1-892637-09-XA ground-breaking new book by Robert Horn discusses/illustrates the power of visual language that combines words and images in new ways and has its own systems of syntax and semantics. It has long been understood that when people see images at the same time as they hear or read information understanding and retention escalate, but the visual language Horn describes goes even further as it facilitates more effective communication and learning not only in the field of education, but also in business, science, and technology.
As our world becomes increasingly complex, Horn believes that visual language will lead to a revolution as transformative as Gutenberg's. Horn claims that visual language is already a global language and that it will rapidly become an international auxiliary language (IAL) in the 21st century. (An IAL is a language that is used in addition to our native languages.)
Visual language is certainly already aiding communication across cultures, especially here on the web. It is difficult to discuss this book in conventional language after having read/seen it. There is no doubt that speakers, teachers, students, and others who depend on effective communication will rethink how they can improve their skills through this powerful new medium.
Horn suggests that visual language "will encourage more complex ways of considering problems, evolve a new aesthetic and genre in the visual arts, contribute to the rise of a more integral culture, provide frameworks for interethnic and intercultural understanding, facilitate the reintegration of science and art, contribute to the wider and better understanding of complex environmental issues, be a foundation for a new international literature, express more clearly the contemporary meaning of life in the cosmos, and help the survival of democracy by enabling voters to understand complex issues." It may also help us process the escalating masses of information that emerge daily in our lives. For anyone who strives to communicate effectively, Visual Language will open new possibilities and is a book to keep close at hand!
Copyright © October 1999 New Horizons for Learning, all rights reserved.
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