Comment by MichaelGG
11 years ago
Video seems to be popular with younger people. I believe this was discussed on HN a while ago. It might also explain the enormous abundance of frighteningly long videos going over the most simple things. My 8 year old daughter regularly makes 20-60+ minute videos about play sessions (dolls, LEGO, Play-Doh - not that LEGO isn't fantastic, but there's a limit...). YouTube seems filled with similar stuff. I've seen 10+ minute videos that are really just about how to type tracert in a Windows command prompt. Someone apparently watches this stuff.
There's also the people that like having videos running while doing something else. I find this to be a disturbing habit, especially when it's done advertisement laden TV nonsense. But people seem to enjoy it.
I find video to be extremely useful for learning something new. For example, when learning math, I find Khan Academy's video lecture to be much more useful than reading the exact same thing out of a textbook.
After I've learned it? Text all the way.
I guess having something running in the background saturates your mind better? I certainly do it, switching from silence to music to lets plays to episodes of QI to MOOC lectures depending on how mentally engaging whatever i'm actually doing is at the moment. Otherwise my mind wanders off the topic at hand and i end up browsing hackernews for far too long.
Sitting at a computer means that there's about 10 possible distractions for me at a given moment, and if I want to do a consistent stretch of actual work, i just happen to need some background noise.
The only thing is the familiarity. If you've heard the song or watched the video a few times, it no longer interrupts focus and actually helps improve it.
An other example are music videos where they show you how to play a certain thing on an instrument. It takes 30 minutes for something that would take two sheets of music notation.
I really think many such videos are a step backward as far as carrying information goes.