Response to Kress/Hefland Articles

I think it's interesting to read articles on technology because it is something that is so new and still changing drastically over a short period of time. It talks about how technology is socially applied knowledge, and how through its use has developed and promoted informality. It took me a while to think about how I felt about this, because I feel it does, and does not. It is pretty easy to notice that technology through computers has developed a different way of writing. We have come up with our own terms and short hand even through typing. Looking at it in this way shows me that it is pretty lazy to develop a "faster" way of typing compared to just a few years ago when everything was handwritten. This article helped me understand that there is a difference between the written word, and the written word that is published online (hypertext). Hypertext includes links, and a page where sound and images can be applied to help develop your voice alongside what is already written. A reliance on writing was mentioned, and I feel that it will always be this way. Although visuals are emerging, I think that writing is the most direct and easiest way to express and emotion, or idea. I feel that visuals have always been around, but the article says that pictures are now doing what writing used to do. I dont understand this, then what did visuals and pictures from before do? Everyone seems to agree that in this day and age, we have an overload of information. It is good to have many resources to look to, but it is almost impossible to reference the ones you need to.
In some cases, pictures do work better to show an idea or action, like the flight deck example. But, I dont think that this is a new movement where pictures are taking over the written word. Pictures definately have developed, for instance through looking at newspapers. They went from being in black and white to color. Now, sometimes pictures are the main focus of an article.
I thought that this article spent alot of time describing the changes of images used throughout textbooks. I feel that this is mostly a style change that has happened over the last few years.
I liked how they said that language can be used to say anything you need to say, rather than to show and illustrate like pictures do. I think that the difference is how the person engages with the text or picture. This article definately got me thinking about how I want to design my web pages to attract and engage the audience they will receive.