003: The varying bandwidth of language
I've always liked to read, much more than I liked to write. Writing is a cumbersome process, refining the text over and over again to asymptotically approach the exact shape of a thought you wish to express (which mind you, in the process of writing can evolve and mutate). All the more reason why as an avid reader, I do appreciate well-written pieces (and why I am trying to write more).
I prefer written language for communication to spoken language. Trying to express complex concepts or even emotions is a difficult thing to do in a spoken setting, as there is no scratchpad to refine your words, you have a limited amount of time before the audience's attention drifts away and the quality of the spoken words can vary based on the state of the mind. It's also very easy to make mistakes and express emotion when you don't want to. Most importantly, the pace of information communicated is bottlenecked by the transmitting person's tongue.
When reading text, your mind is free to process the information at a speed it wants. It can skip forward and backward, it can seek specific phrases or sentences, or even reference other text at will. This process applies to writing as well. Well-written pieces are read a thousand times before they are published. This is also the reason why written language is more dense and generally more high quality than spoken language. The pace of information absorbed is bottlenecked by your mind.
This is the reason why I prefer written language to spoken language.
While there is a certain type of joy in engaging in conversation, I felt consistently over and over again many times when trying to absorb some important and/or complex concept that if it was written down, it would be much easier to process.
I have more the complain about the deficiencies of spoken language and the beauty of written language, but I'll stop here. I encourage people to read more. You learn a lot about a lot.