Communication Breakdown
2 min readAug 14, 2021
My dad used to call the little icons on his ’88 Ford Escort’s dashboard “idiot lights”. Why? Because they substituted the nuance and complexity of detailed analog gauges with big dumb binaries:
NEEDS OIL NOW! {light} vs. KEEP CALM & CARRY ON {dark].
“They think we’re idiots, hiding the details like that.” he grumbled.