You can speed up a video, a feature of lecture videos in the Coursera courses I've taken. With pitch adjustment, it's surprising how much better even a good lec

You can speed up a video, a feature of lecture videos in the Coursera courses I've taken. With pitch adjustment, it's surprising how much better even a good lecture is when speeded up. But you can't edit out superfluous content. It seems to me that the future of online video is exemplified by the recipe videos produced by Gawker that appear in the Facebook feed under names like "Tasty". These speeded-up cooking videos allow the viewer to skim how a dish is put together, from start to finish, in about 30 seconds. (I watched one just now that took 55 seconds and I found myself impatient with its slow pace!) In their simple, junk-foodie way, these videos illustrate that the measure of quality is not just how quickly and efficiently information is transmitted to the brain, but also the degree of emotional impact.