The author takes on the ambitious task of revealing how we humans have exchanged our thoughts and ideas over the centuries. The book is in five Parts and these are sub-divided into sections dealing with specific areas of communication. Horsham says in his introduction that this is a bit of a mixed bag, basically because there is so much of it and now with electronic media, the amount produced is expanding rapidly.
In Part two he quotes an essential truism: technology is the main driver of visual media. He gives as an example the development of the Linotype typesetting machine which allowed print media to really take off in the 1880s (incidentally the machine's inventors avoided using a qwerty keyboard favouring one that arranged the letters in most common use). Part three considers images used in architecture, films, and advertising. The credits to Hitchcock's 'North by Northwest by Saul Bass are used as an example to connect visually European modernist architecture to the film because both used orthogonal design elements though they are obviously different types of media.
I thought the best parts of the book are Parts four and five because they probe the accelerating changes in digital media, especially with the use of AI. Increasingly visual communication is being used to change reality to what its producers want the public to believe. Can we trust our eyes and ears when Trump's Kellyanne Conway defended the White House Press Secretary, Sean Spicer with 'alternative facts about the number of people attending Trump's inauguration, photos of the event clearly show far more attended Obama's inauguration.
Michael Horsham's book (with 199 images) offers some worthwhile thoughts on how we humans have communicated over the centuries.
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