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I'm not sure about that. The topics I want to dig into I usually find it's harder to get the level of depth I want on a topic in book form than I do than to fin

I'm not sure about that. The topics I want to dig into I usually find it's harder to get the level of depth I want on a topic in book form than I do than to find videos on YouTube. Some random examples: - I'm interested in turbine engines, AgentJayZ has a while host of videos taking real turbine engines apart, talking about obscure features like compressor variable valve vanes etc. - Plumbing, almost everything I've ever needed to know about plumbing has been available from PlumberParts / dereton33. - Woodworking, I basically learned everything I know from watching people like Matthias Wandel. - Recently I've been digging to electronics, I have an excellent book "Practical Electronics for Inventors" but every now and again I need to hear a different take on the same things and invariably there is a good video or article which clears it up for me. What's more, to get the level of detail these guys show for free in book form would mean investing in some seriously expensive books, most of which hide the interesting parts under a lot of uninteresting maths.

karatestomp 6y ago
Oh yeah, for the subset of content that is "watch an expert do a thing" the Web has become extremely good. Nothing before touches it. In part I think it's remained so because almost all the content is on one site—there's no web search involved in finding it at all, you just search Youtube (which is owned by the main company that might help you find videos on other sites). If Google'd found a way to reward putting academic & deep cultural-knowledge material on a platform they owned such that they had a near-monopoly, perhaps that site would be good. The web at-large might remain basically useless for it (or, probably, even worse, as everyone went to that single platform) such that it depends on one's perspective whether it's the Web delivering value or just Google's platform that could be served just about any damn way at this point (if they decided to transition over to a new non-Web protocol just for Youtube and put it in Chrome they might well succeed in forcing everyone else to adopt it)
gibolt 6y ago
What a great point. If I want to know how to do something physical, or learn how a piece of hardware works, YouTube is the place. Since it is Google, how awesome would it be if videos also had related web searches attached to them, instead of just related videos. How-tos could have links to the original manual, the most detailed maintenance manuals, or patents and blogs detailing the physics behind how that thing works. Probably not going to happen and would only be for power users, but it could be so powerful.

karatestomp 6y ago

Oh yeah, for the subset of content that is "watch an expert do a thing" the Web has become extremely good. Nothing before touches it. In part I think it's remained so because almost all the content is on one site—there's no web search involved in finding it at all, you just search Youtube (which is owned by the main company that might help you find videos on other sites). If Google'd found a way to reward putting academic & deep cultural-knowledge material on a platform they owned such that they had a near-monopoly, perhaps that site would be good. The web at-large might remain basically useless for it (or, probably, even worse, as everyone went to that single platform) such that it depends on one's perspective whether it's the Web delivering value or just Google's platform that could be served just about any damn way at this point (if they decided to transition over to a new non-Web protocol just for Youtube and put it in Chrome they might well succeed in forcing everyone else to adopt it)

gibolt 6y ago

What a great point. If I want to know how to do something physical, or learn how a piece of hardware works, YouTube is the place. Since it is Google, how awesome would it be if videos also had related web searches attached to them, instead of just related videos. How-tos could have links to the original manual, the most detailed maintenance manuals, or patents and blogs detailing the physics behind how that thing works. Probably not going to happen and would only be for power users, but it could be so powerful.