That’s a very good question, Dylan. Can’t agree more with all you wrote. As someone that also works a lot with content and storytelling, I would argue that the best way to explain complex ideas is by mastering several media formats. I don’t think we can only rely on text only or pictures only or any single medium anymore.

Also, I would argue that there is a serious lack of system thinking and modeling when it comes to writing or explaining complex concepts. I’m surprised that we don’t read about this anymore, but things like legislation can’t be done “by hand” anymore. Ramifications of self-driving cars, impact of self-driving trucks, etc. All the new disruptions will require heavy systemic modeling (climate change being one of the first ones decades ago).

The combination of both, good understanding of different media resources (visualizations, pictures, video, text, audio, etc.) and a solid understanding of system thinking could produce much better results. Then again, as you pointed out, most people are not willing to devote any effort to the cause ;)