Am I the only one who has completely lost interest in podcasts and videocasts? I become so annoyed now when I see a link to what sounds like an interesting opinion or interview only to discover that it requires me to download a 45mb podcast and listen to the whole damned thing to find the part I want; or load up a small blocky flash video and devote my full attention to it.
I much prefer to read, to skim the paragraphs and pick up the parts that interest me, without having to wait for it. It seems odd that the spectacularly hyperlinked and random web is now dominated by such linear methods of gaining information, methods that take so much time and rapt attention. No wonder businesses everywhere are trying to limit employee access to the web, it is demanding too much of their attention for such little benefit!
Note to content generators out there: when I click through to your interview and it is only available in an audio or video format, I go away without it. Old fashioned transcripts are the key, guys.
In an era with fewer than 50% of American adults reading for pleasure anymore, online videos seem like the natural response to an audience which is becoming increasingly unpracticed in reading.
This worries me. Reading something is the only activity that develops the vital human social capacity for empathy. Watching something tends not to do that (though with a very skillful director and actor, perhaps one could argue). It’s only with empathetic skills that we’re going to get anywhere. That’s me going off on a tangent.
well-put, Gene! — and not only are podcasts and videocasts a huge waste of time (and bandwidth), they’re also almost unsearchable (unlike text) and so they have virtually no reference value for the future …
That’s why I still subscribe to a tree-killing hardcopy newspaper: I can jump all through it, see articles I had not expected but turn out to be interested in. That serendipity is very important. Though, it’s getting harder and harder to read, dammit.
And I do get bored with the long rambling personal podcasts. I subscribe to short ones like ’60 second science’ from SA, and pick some of the funnier skits from X-Play.
And the WineKone on YouTube makes me laugh out loud.