As children, we were taught that words and pictures are not equal. Although we gain meaning from each, reading seemed to be far more valued than the ability to interpret pictures. However, we’ve also learned from our attempts to create meaningful presentations and communiques in our professional lives that a picture can be worth a thousand words.
As technology has progressed, we have all become more and more reliant on visuals in our daily communications. Charts and graphs, the workhorses of most presentations, show the relationships among variables and enable viewers to grasp complex data at a glance. Web sites and marketing materials without photos or graphics are unacceptable by current audience expectations. Even in real life, courtroom attorneys who communicate and persuade by speaking, are turning to photos and graphics using 3D animation and digital images as demonstrative evidence to influence jurors.
Many of the most common modes of communication support little or no visual content, including the telephone call, email and instant messaging. Video phones never made it to the main stream (and all of us who have worked “jammie jobs” are eternally grateful for that), and the ability to include images in email or IM is based on attachments or uploads.
These methods lack real-time, synchronous image sharing capabilities. When we attach an image we hope that it gets through security settings and firewalls and that the person we send it to actually looks at it. When we post images to website and send people there to look at them, we’re never really sure that we’re both looking at exactly the same thing.
But, as Bob Dylan so profoundly sang, the times they are a-changin’.
Our beta customers are telling us that the ability Apeer provides to make a direct connection in an online workspace with a group of people to see images AT THE SAME TIME, simply changes everything. Apeer brings visuals into the conversation in a way that up until now has only happened when you were in the same room – when you could say, “hey, look at this” or “is this what you mean?” – and let the conversation flow in an ad hoc manner.
Apeer makes visual communication a reality – with images, video AND audio. It’s a whole new world.
