The rise and fall and rise of text
Some random thoughts on a Friday afternoon …
In the beginning, all we had for one-to-many communication was text. Then we got audio (radio) and then video. Initially, these displaced text. Video, especially, is high bandwidth compared to text — more information can be communicated per unit of time (I think). However, high bandwidth also requires high attention. You cannot skim a video very easily. Then life got faster and faster, and along came the Internet. Video works on the Internet too, but people don’t have so much time for it. Hence, text is coming back, because although it is low-bandwidth, it is also low-attention.
3 Comments
I couldn’t agree less. Video is incredibly low bandwidth w/r/t text, by your definition. I can learn much more by reading text for 10 minutes than I ever could by watching a video for 10 minutes. Think of news stories: how much information do you learn by watching a 3-minute or 5-minute video? How long does it take you to read a much more detailed newspaper report?
Felix: Thanks, that is an interesting comment. You are defining bandwidth by what you can learn per unit of time. I guess I was thinking about it differently, as in computer data.
I’m actually using your definition of bandwidth: how much “information can be communicated per unit of time”. I’m just taking into account the fact that for information to be communicated, you need someone receiving as well as someone sending. Otherwise there’s no communication, just shouting into a void.