I despise videos when text and photos would do—I’m far too often in a noisy (or shared quiet) space, and I read so much faster than people talk. I’m even more annoyed at videos that pad their runtime to hit ad minima or something—I can’t take a quick scroll to the end to see if it’s worthwhile, then go back and absorb what I need at my own pace.
I recognized that videos take less time from the creator, and pay better. So that’s the way of the world, but I don’t have to like it. I mention this mostly as an explanation that I know I’m in the “old man yells at cloud” phase of my life, and a reason that I’m OK with some aspects of it.
I think video has a potentially higher bandwidth of information that text. The downside is that it more difficult to skim esp for people who can speedread. I was very happy when my son pointed out the transcript panel in YouTube which partly solves that. I think there are quite some valuable features left in that solution space.
Transcripts and playback at 1.5-2.5 speed (depending content) definitely helps a lot, as does a ToC with timestamps. You’re right that it’s higher bandwidth (in terms of information per second of participation), but I think my objection is that not all of that information is equally valuable, and I often prefer lower-bandwidth more-heavily-curated information.
Hmm, I wonder if I can generalize this to “communication bandwidth is a cost, not a benefit”. Spending lots more attention-effort to get a small amount more useful information isn’t a tradeoff I’ll make most of the time.
Spending lots more attention-effort to get a small amount more useful information isn’t a tradeoff I’ll make most of the time.
This makes it generally a worse medium for a rational debate. Few people are willing to spend dozens of hours to become familiar with the arguments of their opponents. So instead the vlog debate will degenerate into “each side produces hours of convicing videos, everyone watches the videos of their side and throws the links to the opponents, but no one bothers watching the opponents’ videos”.
I despise videos when text and photos would do—I’m far too often in a noisy (or shared quiet) space, and I read so much faster than people talk. I’m even more annoyed at videos that pad their runtime to hit ad minima or something—I can’t take a quick scroll to the end to see if it’s worthwhile, then go back and absorb what I need at my own pace.
I recognized that videos take less time from the creator, and pay better. So that’s the way of the world, but I don’t have to like it. I mention this mostly as an explanation that I know I’m in the “old man yells at cloud” phase of my life, and a reason that I’m OK with some aspects of it.
I think video has a potentially higher bandwidth of information that text. The downside is that it more difficult to skim esp for people who can speedread. I was very happy when my son pointed out the transcript panel in YouTube which partly solves that. I think there are quite some valuable features left in that solution space.
Transcripts and playback at 1.5-2.5 speed (depending content) definitely helps a lot, as does a ToC with timestamps. You’re right that it’s higher bandwidth (in terms of information per second of participation), but I think my objection is that not all of that information is equally valuable, and I often prefer lower-bandwidth more-heavily-curated information.
Hmm, I wonder if I can generalize this to “communication bandwidth is a cost, not a benefit”. Spending lots more attention-effort to get a small amount more useful information isn’t a tradeoff I’ll make most of the time.
This makes it generally a worse medium for a rational debate. Few people are willing to spend dozens of hours to become familiar with the arguments of their opponents. So instead the vlog debate will degenerate into “each side produces hours of convicing videos, everyone watches the videos of their side and throws the links to the opponents, but no one bothers watching the opponents’ videos”.