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Oh. I missed you.
May. 1st, 2008 11:57 amYesterday, I was driving to work, and I became desirous of some noise. Because my commute to work is only 3.5 miles, I never bother plugging in my iPod for the trip; too much hassle for a 15-minute drive.
So I turned my car stereo to Tuner and listened to NPR.
I stopped listening to NPR about four years ago, when waking up to the morning news started to reliably enrage me before I'd had a chance to wake up enough to put the bulletproof vest on. And, to be honest, I was tired: tired of everything I could listen to that I couldn't help. I was tired of politics. I ran out of caring.
So I turn on Morning Edition and it's the same voices that were on when I stopped listening. This morning, they're in Tacoma, talking to people there about what it's like to live in Tacoma.
I don't think I'll go back to being a regular NPR listener. But I discovered yesterday and today that...I kind of missed it.
Well, hello there.
*****
I was pondering last night why I dislike Web video, why I can't listen to podcasts. It was observing Laura's behavior that clinched it for me. She listens to books while she's playing games or cooking.
Because of my brain malfunction, I can't do that. If I stop paying very close attention to sounds, they cease to make sense. I cannot listen to podcasts or books and do something else at the same time. (I can't even drive and listen to books at the same time.) I'll start off well, paying attention, maybe even managing to split my attention between the words and whatever else I'm doing.
Then I look up and realize that 15 minutes have passed and the words have been gibberish that whole time, and I have no idea what's being talked about because I haven't been listening. Listening takes energy, a lot of it.
Which brings me to videos on the Web. It's not that I don't like the idea. It's just the time commitment. "It's only three minutes," someone says. Or, "It's only fifteen minutes."
Let's take three minutes. I take approximately 30 seconds to read a page on an average Salon article. Most articles on there take me 90 seconds total. An item in my RSS feed takes me 5 seconds to scan, grok, and move on; if it's longer or needs more thought, I open the original article and come back to it later. I deal with most items in my email inboxes in less than 30 seconds.
Three minutes is an incredible amount of information if I'm using my eyes. Three minutes is not so much when the means of information is verbal.
The other thing about Web video is that the YouTube applet does not indicate how long a video is going to be before you click Play. And a lot of people post videos "bare"; without any description of the contents.
The videos I do watch all have one thing in common: the person posting has made a note of approximately how long it is, and has described the contents in such a way that I think I might enjoy spending three or fifteen minutes watching the video. ("This is the coolest video ever!" is not a convincing or useful description.) I recently had in my RSS feed a link to a video that, miracle of miracles, had a full transcript. The video was about 25 minutes long. It took me less than five minutes to read everything that was in the talk, I got the full benefit of it, and all was well.
I am hearing impaired; that my impairment has nothing to do with my ears and everything to do with my brain makes no practical difference except for the fact that I can pass for hearing pretty well. What it does mean is that the several hundred videos per week that get posted in my RSS feeds and by my LJ friends go completely unwatched.
It's not really a complaint, though I do run into a lot of people asking me "have you seen?" about various videos that I haven't watched. Just an observation--why me and YouTube don't get along.
So I turned my car stereo to Tuner and listened to NPR.
I stopped listening to NPR about four years ago, when waking up to the morning news started to reliably enrage me before I'd had a chance to wake up enough to put the bulletproof vest on. And, to be honest, I was tired: tired of everything I could listen to that I couldn't help. I was tired of politics. I ran out of caring.
So I turn on Morning Edition and it's the same voices that were on when I stopped listening. This morning, they're in Tacoma, talking to people there about what it's like to live in Tacoma.
I don't think I'll go back to being a regular NPR listener. But I discovered yesterday and today that...I kind of missed it.
Well, hello there.
*****
I was pondering last night why I dislike Web video, why I can't listen to podcasts. It was observing Laura's behavior that clinched it for me. She listens to books while she's playing games or cooking.
Because of my brain malfunction, I can't do that. If I stop paying very close attention to sounds, they cease to make sense. I cannot listen to podcasts or books and do something else at the same time. (I can't even drive and listen to books at the same time.) I'll start off well, paying attention, maybe even managing to split my attention between the words and whatever else I'm doing.
Then I look up and realize that 15 minutes have passed and the words have been gibberish that whole time, and I have no idea what's being talked about because I haven't been listening. Listening takes energy, a lot of it.
Which brings me to videos on the Web. It's not that I don't like the idea. It's just the time commitment. "It's only three minutes," someone says. Or, "It's only fifteen minutes."
Let's take three minutes. I take approximately 30 seconds to read a page on an average Salon article. Most articles on there take me 90 seconds total. An item in my RSS feed takes me 5 seconds to scan, grok, and move on; if it's longer or needs more thought, I open the original article and come back to it later. I deal with most items in my email inboxes in less than 30 seconds.
Three minutes is an incredible amount of information if I'm using my eyes. Three minutes is not so much when the means of information is verbal.
The other thing about Web video is that the YouTube applet does not indicate how long a video is going to be before you click Play. And a lot of people post videos "bare"; without any description of the contents.
The videos I do watch all have one thing in common: the person posting has made a note of approximately how long it is, and has described the contents in such a way that I think I might enjoy spending three or fifteen minutes watching the video. ("This is the coolest video ever!" is not a convincing or useful description.) I recently had in my RSS feed a link to a video that, miracle of miracles, had a full transcript. The video was about 25 minutes long. It took me less than five minutes to read everything that was in the talk, I got the full benefit of it, and all was well.
I am hearing impaired; that my impairment has nothing to do with my ears and everything to do with my brain makes no practical difference except for the fact that I can pass for hearing pretty well. What it does mean is that the several hundred videos per week that get posted in my RSS feeds and by my LJ friends go completely unwatched.
It's not really a complaint, though I do run into a lot of people asking me "have you seen?" about various videos that I haven't watched. Just an observation--why me and YouTube don't get along.
