Introduction

Telecommunication by radio shrank the world to a global village, and the satellite and computer have made imagery the language of that village. The creation of images was once mainly in the hands of artists and scribes. Their art works—the famous stone-age cave paintings, the engravings on stone, bone and tooth, and the paintings on bark and skin that have been lost—go back to the distant past. Their inscriptions are also images, though of a different kind. They are also very old. as witnessed by hieroglyphic writing on the walls of tombs and on papyrus in Egypt. In modem times artists and scribes were joined by photographers and printers as creators of images. A variety of artisans, playing a secondary role as artists, created a third kind of image: ornament manifested on pottery, in woven fabrics and carpets, in tile patterns, and in painted friezes. Builders and cartographers created a fourth kind of image, once relatively rare but nevertheless going back to antiquity: construction plans and maps.