Zeke, you reminded me of one of my favorite aids to navigation: dead reckoning. (Having just looked it up, thanks, wikipedia, I realize that I should clarify: I mean traditional dead reckoning and old school navigation techniques like the south pacific islanders used…)

One of my fantasy research projects (yes, I have them) is to compare dead reckoning practices with more technology-enhanced methods of navigating. What exactly do we lose when we stop using our bodies (vision, balance, touch) to locate ourselves in space? Someone once told me (reliable source? not sure) that the Navy was actually interested in funding this kind of research. The skill of dead reckoning is a dying art, but when fancy systems fail, it’s nice to have someone on board who can get the multi-gazillion dollar vessel back to dock.

Josh, I guess that’s kind of the point I was trying to work through: the blissfully (?) ignorant aspect of visual literacy. I’m not really advocating obliviousness, but I guess I just want to recognize that it is a real, viable (though maybe not admirable) way to go through life, and that this state of being and that I am kind of fascinated and entertained by people who exploit it. I guess I was thinking about situations where the very thing that is neglected by the “information overloaded” masses is recognized as valuable by a “resource-poor” subculture. And all the social dynamics that go along with that sort of shift of empowerment.

Another example just came to mind. At some point in the last year, I heard a presentation about the information behavior practices of children with autism and their families. One of the things that struck me at the time was how the researcher described how high functioning these kids were when information was presented in a visual format. Her talk focused on the limitations of this group and the challenges faced by their families as a result of communication difficulties. My question to the her and to the audience: “Instead of focusing on the limitations of this group, why don’t we study them as an example of best practices with regards to the use of visual information? Why don’t we view them as expert users?” The researcher liked that idea. I liked that idea, too.

His point was that there is a superficial level at which we experience the world around us that is based only on looking, and then another level (or levels) of understanding based on synthesizing what we see with what we know. As Joshua noted above, we choose how much we want to know about the world we experience visually, and about how much we gloss over.

My experience has been that anything that contains new visual information, or information that is presented in a way that is not immediately understandable, automatically gets ignored by most people. So often our brains move through the world with a preconceived notion of what is important or what we “should” be seeing that we see a tiny fraction of the information out there. Which also makes me think of “The Purloined Letter,” which if you haven’t read you should.