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> The people who stuck with print were people who preferred to read the news rather than watch or listen. You can call this “literate” but the trope that readin
by philwelch 7y ago
> The people who stuck with print were people who preferred to read the news rather than watch or listen. You can call this “literate” but the trope that reading is some higher form of media needs to go away.
Sorry, but it is. Functionally literate people can read and comprehend many more WPM than are typical for human speech. As a consequence, written media are fundamentally capable of much higher information density than visual or audial media, with the exception of certain types of visual or spacial information which can still be printed or included with the written word.
- Spivak 7y agoAnd that would matter if the goal of writing was maximizing information density. Surely you wouldn't say that gzip is the highest form of the written word.
- mistermann 7y agoThis is a good point. Communication, across various mediums, propogates ideas. Information density is interesting, but this style of thinking overlooks persuasive impact.
- marcus_holmes 7y agoI don't watch videos online if I can help it, because they're too slow. If I do, because there's no transcript available, I crank up the speed to x2 or x4 to mitigate the frustration. Any "persuasive" impact from video is lost on me because I'm bored and frustrated after about 30s of watching (and that's after skipping the first 30s of "welcome to my youtube channel, today we'll be doing what the title says we'll be doing, as you know because that's why you clicked on this link" waste of time).
- philwelch 7y agoThat’s such a fatuous analogy that I have to conclude that you are deliberately missing the point.