We are seeing people create more (and better) multimedia. It is easier to create a short audio or video message than it is to type a message, and once storage and delivery cease to be problems (as we are seeing today) there is less of an incentive to create text. True, there will always be a need for text, especially among academics, but much (if not most) popular communication will be audio and video.
The challenge will be to effect a transition between the textual world and the multimedia, to communicate complex ideas in a manner accessible to people using audio and video. Neither medium favours the abstract (and neither do their consumers today) and each medium imposes channel limitations (you can't skim an audio or video file).
It will be necessary, in my view, to evolve a form of language that combines audio, video and text, to in other words combine the subtlety and expressiveness of text with the emotion and immediacy of audio and video.
Yes! Once again Stephen Downes has articulated a vision that I share. Yes, multimedia is getting easier. Anyone who can use a phone can dial into AudioBlogger and post a message on a blog. At a slightly more sophisticated level, you can use the freeware Audacity and/or Apple's GarageBand to create an MP3 and link it to a blog and/or create a podcast.
And webcams and digital video cameras come in all levels of sophistication, with some very cheap and easy. YouTube and OurMedia make sharing video easy. You can even see an example of audio and video and text combined with certain presentation software, for example take half an hour to look at Nigel Paine talking about Podcasting, wikis and blogs at the BBC using datapresenter software. (Ignore the overlong silly Ninja bit, and just get to the content.)
For sure, the rapid development of photosharing sites such as Flickr show how important visuals are to the general population. But I take some issue with Stephen when he says "there will always be a need for text, especially among academics, but much (if not most) popular communication will be audio and video." According to the Pew research, at least 12% of the (North?) American population blogs, and about 39% of us read blogs. If you add in reading books, etc. it's obvious that text is profoundly important. I also believe the act of writing has a different learning and psychological insight impact that results from speaking and then viewing and/or hearing recordings of it. I think writing helps you move forward in your thinking and understanding in a way that recorded speech and visuals don't.
Maybe what I'm saying is that language is my path. If I stop to think of people I know who aren't as text-oriented as I am, and who are more aurally or visually oriented, then maybe then can learn, think, and understand in a more multimedia environment. Heck, maybe I'm part of the last print generation and the transition. So maybe I don't have an issue with what Stephen says, especially when I re-read the second paragraph in the quotation where he mentions the abstract. As Roseanne Rosanna Danna used to say: "Never Mind ;->"
Once again, Stephen has sparked my thinking through a concept, not simply accepting what is written, and I think that's one of the wonders of what text allows and invites.
technorati tags:Downes, multimedia, text
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