VISION

One of the fastest changes coming to the world is the way we communicate in general. The written page is giving way rapidly to the visual icon. This is a form of 'communication compression,' where thesis is added upon thesis---not through tedious articles and books redescribing them--but rather distilled to within a single image representation.

This form of communication is particularly important where plateaus of understanding have been reached. You see this illustrated with familiar international road sign icons telling the "whole story" of what's ahead in just one picture. Further progress in future international cultural values can more easily be built upon with the greater use of such shorthand. In more complex matters both words and images will explain a new theme park concept, or a manufacturing plant to investors. Investments will increasingly result from the images of proposed future values, and these images must be good enough, clear enough, accurate enough so that the responsible managers of capital come rightly to feel confident in making their crucial investments for the environments of tomorrow. Tomorrow is all about vision--both externally, and internally.

Do I claim that the visual image has become the only agent for causing future investment? Of course not. Will high quality images and icons replace the spread sheet? No one says so. They will display it, however, in the clearest and most understandable way known to man. Today the best of business plans are presented with a dazzeling concoction of written documents, standard video, audio, and computer generated other images. With HDTV widely employed an entire business plan may be in the form of a finely honed audio-visual presentation, produced by desktop studios. Photographs, drawings, video images--the mltimedia panapoly--all delivered seemlessly to HDTV monitors and shown tantalizingly to large groups. Consumer-priced HDTV sets can shape the future by powerfully influencing economic decisions. Every other increase in communications facility has by magnitudes bolstered business volume. There is no reason to think that HDTV will do less. Companies, cities, states, and national secutiry has turned to the pictorialization of their future plans, and this will increasingly be done via high-resolution systems. And, when their projects are built, it's a safe bet they will have auditoriums where people can see the documentary about the project presented stunningly in an HDTV format.

It is being more realized today than ever before that the forests of the world are being consumed for our daily newspapers. Some have suggested the high resolution system in the home brings the finest of all solutions for this ecological dilemma. To be able to enjoy one's daily reading and graphic presentations by the television standards employed today is impossible. The present systems simply do not have enough readability. But with HDTV that problem is eliminated. We may have access to publications coming from any corner of the world. We should greet HDTV with unbridled enthusiasm if only considering these hopeful options.