Is video inherently flawed, or is this consolidation in operation?

Thanks Josie for pointing this out to me. For teachers concerned with feedback, this is a key question: two really, because the consolidation question is separate from the question of the affordances of the medium. I am interested in the affordance question but do not know the answer. I do know that it is easier to write than to speak in most of the environments I work in. Or, that is, I find it easier. In open plan working environments or coffee shops or trains the rattle of the keys is normal (and normalised), whereas speaking out loud at a computer is not. Telephone conversation is becoming more acceptable, but monologues on dictaphones are more annoying. For me the heavy overhead of video is in part having a studio-like environment in which to work as well as having and knowing how to use the tools. I follow Change da channel on Youtube. He gets regular video commentary. He is great (imo). The video commentary: well, my mother said if you don’t have anything nice to say… Let’s say the discourse is just not made much richer. I have adopted Twitter and blogging and a little IM on Skype and discussion forums. Each tweaks the old epistolary conventions, allowing for more or less dialogue, more or less reflection, more or less extension. I have tried adding audio into the mix, recording feedback for students. It should work. It really should. But, I find myself going blub blub blub and having to re-record. Maybe I need elocution lessons? Video magnifies the blub blub blub effect: is my hair OK? And one is expected to be clothed. In epistolary conventions (and on the Internet) no one knows you are a dog (or naked, or wearing a torn Metallica t-shirt). The visual semantics have to be taken into account, as do the expectations of the audience. Some of my students wouldn’t mind the t-shirt. Others would prefer more professional garb when getting commentary on their 52%. With epistolary conventions I can write properly dressed prose from a scholar’s office no matter where I am or how (or if) I am dressed. On video I have to look as well as sound the part. Even my accent has to be taken into account. Video is inherently different. I find it much harder to use.

Oh yes. And, there does appear to be consolidation in operation: see, e.g. Research and Markets, “Internet Video – Conditions of Profitability” http://www.researchandmarkets.com/reports/660784

there is a visitors vs. residents issue here (to borrow David White’s categorisation of online users). Twitter is a tool for residents. It’s about people being immersed. It’s about people “living a percentage of their life online“. When visitors get hold of Twitter they see it as a tool to get a job done when the need arises

Andy Powell makes a passing, tongue-in-cheek comment about the world having two kinds of people. Here he means Twitter visitors and Twitter residents. But he jokes about two other kinds of people: those who divide the world into two kinds of people and those who don’t. My knees jerk when presented with binaries, and the Internet, of which Twitter is but a part is too complex for binary classification systems, though they may remain useful for discussion purposes. With Twitter there are all sorts of residents and all sorts of visitors. I am reminded of Vermont, a pleasant, hilly, rural, poor corner of northern New England in the US, where tourism is an important industry. Since the 19th century visitors came from the sweltering coastal cities of New York, Boston and Philadelphia in the summer, spawning the term “summer people”. Summer people owned houses or rented but left when the cool nights turned cold and their homes (and school and work) called. But, some liked it up north so much they stayed spawning the term “all-year summer people”: no more rooted than the migrant visitors. Some all-year summer people had kids and raised them in Vermont. Were they local? “Just because a cat has kittens in the oven, don’t make them biscuits,” said the locals, and gave rise to “second-generation summer people”.

There are all kinds of Twitter residents: those who follow celebrities and those who don’t; those who protect their profile (all year summer people as far as I am concerned) and those who don’t; those who strive for thousands of followers, those who use it for research, those for whom it is purely frivolous. And, there are all sorts of visitors. There are the coach tours and the backpackers; new-age travellers and tourists; travel writers and thse who send postcards home. For a lot of us Twitter is our postcard home, and a little like the turtle’s shell: a piece of home we carry with us.