Thought for the Week: the immortal word

Isaac Asimov's defense of the written word:

"Consider, for instance, Hamlet's great soliloquy that begins with 'To be or not to be,' the poetic consideration of the pros and cons of suicide. It is 260 words long. Can you get across the essence of Hamlet's thought in a quarter of a picture -- or, for that matter, in 260 pictures? Of course not.... Pictures will not do; they will never do. Television is fun to watch, but it is utterly and entirely dependent on the spoken and written word.... There is a fundamental rule, then. In the beginning was the word (as the Gospel of John says in a different connection), and in the end will be the word. The word is immortal."

(I found this quote in Fit Bodies, Fat Minds by Os Guinness.)