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Why text?

Why text?

We believe it’s important that you be able to capture Pings in a medium:

  1. You feel fluent in
  2. Is usually within reach
  3. That will work for you over time

For the initial set of practitioners, this medium is text. Text is durable, lightweight, and serves our purpose.

Text also leaves a gap —

Translating pings (which are fleeting, fluid and dynamic) into any medium (which are fixed in form) inherently involves some loss.12

However, in that compression lies the potential for us to turn something shapeless and shadowy into a recognizable form that we can revisit, reimagine, combine, build upon, and ultimately, learn from and integrate over time.3

While text is by no means exhaustive, it’s a starting place.

  1. “There is no such thing in nature as ‘man’ or ‘tree.’ The universe offers no such categories or simplifications; only flux and infinite variety. The photograph documents and celebrates the particularities of this infinite variety. Language makes them comprehensible.” — Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death

  2. “A mere smile or touch may signal our consciousness of an important occasion. Insofar as these gestures can be observed they are public. They are also fleeting, however, and their meaning so eludes confident interpretation that they cannot provide the basis for group planning and action. They lack the firmness and objectivity of words and pictures.” — Yi-Fu Tuan, Space and Place

  3. “Words have the general power to bring to light experiences that lie in the shadow or have receded into it, and the specific power to call places into being. It may need only a few kind words among friends to change an ordinary kitchen into a bright and happy place.” — Yi-Fu Tuan, Language and the Making of Place

Thank you for experiencing this transmission —
From: Peter Pelberg
Began on: August 15, 2024
Sent on: April 11, 2025
Last edited on: April 11, 2025

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