I grew up in an era of print. We are now living in an era increasingly of video. What are the implications for public speakers and communications in general? Following are a series of axioms that I hope will provoke you to respond with insights of your own, in the (written) comments below.
Print is fast. Video is slow but speeding up. One of my pet peeves with video is how inefficient and slow it is for conveying information. The cliché says that ‘a picture is worth a thousand words’, but my experience is exactly the opposite. I find it painfully difficult to watch documentaries because it takes so long for the medium to impart the same amount of information I could devour in a brief article in a few minutes. But there is no question that video is speeding up. We are developing a video vernacular that moves much faster and more economically in 2022 than it did in, say, 1995. Movies from the 90s seem to crawl at a pace that makes them nearly unwatchable compared to today’s films — unless of course we are talking about emotional impact or visual beauty, and then time is not important, is it?
A recent study found that students could absorb as much information watching a video of a lecture at twice the speed (roughly 300 words per minute) of normal speech. It’s a surprising finding because the limit was thought to be 275 words per minute, based on earlier studies. But the research…
