In our new, multilingual society, written, verbal instructions have been replaced by pictures. Cave art quality pictures. Stick people pictures. For those of us who are word-oriented, the new trend toward pictorial instructions is a pain in the, er, brain.

I think this is "how to make a cane." I could be wrong.
photo by quarksteilchen	via PhotoRee

People gripe and grumble about everything appearing in Spanish, but I'd much rather try to interpret a sign in Spanish than a sign in pictographs.

It used to be that I could read the multiple pages of instructions and figure out where that last nut and bolt were supposed to go. I could determine which step we'd skipped in assembly or activation of an item. Nowadays, I feel completely illiterate. Pictures mean nothing to me, particularly pictures that are little more than strange symbols.

THIS makes sense.
photo by Paul Hagon	via PhotoRee

Anybody else experiencing this discomfort? Wishing we could go back to the days of instructions that were actually written out in letters?