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 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”.