Visual literacy

After a month online, some things have become clear at Jurisdynamics. Within the community of law-related weblogs, Jurisdynamics hopes (among many other ambitions) to distinguish itself as the most visually striking forum for law-related discussion on the Internet. When that community includes Althouse, BlackProf, and Concurring Opinions, that goal is a tall order indeed. But it is also a worthy goal.

Having tangentially discussed the biometric analysis of Web browsing and the mathematics of color, I now wish to lay explicit claim to visual literacy as a goal for Jurisdynamics and its entire network of affiliated blogs.

Modern technology demands no less. The overwhelming majority of visitors to this website have a monitor resolution no worse than 1024x768 pixels; nearly nine-tenths enjoy 32-bit color depth. Humans have communicated through pictures since well before the advent of writing. A palette this deep is simply wasted if it conveys nothing more than the symbolically comprehensive but visually impoverished world of Unicode.

Jurisdynamics makes no pretense of being a professionally designed website. Its webmaster, after all, doesn't even have a body. And enterprises such as the On-Line Visual Literacy Project are proselytizing on behalf of visual literacy with far greater fervor and and with far more success. But Jurisdynamics does pledge to harness the power of visual imagery in pursuit of its intellectual goals. In an age still defined by Moore's Law, the old ratio expressing the relative value of pictures and words needs to be upgraded by an order of magnitude or two. Jurisdynamics has every intention of being on the winning end of that transition.