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Comment by matwood | Hacker News Reader

I think you're applying your incomplete idea of what it means to create. Now phones/tablets let people say 'that video is cool, let's make one.' Same with pictures or other digital art. When I look at the creator options available in my pocket, I'm amazed.

If anything, back in the 90s having to learn to create web pages was a barrier to creation. Video? Forget about it. Digital cameras were just coming around, but were still super expensive. I have some old pics taken on my flip phone from the early 2000s and they are...really bad. Instead I had to spend hundreds of dollars are completely separate device to be creative. And that device still didn't do video.

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> Now phones/tablets let people say 'that video is cool, let's make one.'

The problem is that outside of certain subjects, video is a time-inefficient and low-information-density medium. So many things could be conveyed in fuller form, and in a way more respectful of people’s time, by using text. Unfortunately, the use of phones as default devices by many people today young and old discourages longform text, due to the limitations of tiny touch keyboards and screens. That is my own feeling of unease with the way tech is today.

In some niche travel scenes, I have seen a big decline in meaty, useful information since the early millennium, when a blogger generally had a laptop to type on. Sure, now we get glamorous video content, but that can’t be all there is.

As a counterpoint, I love video content. When I’m learning something, I’d much rather watch a talk on the topic rather than read an article on it, if I can. Especially when being first introduced to a topic, I will always reach for videos when they’re available. Conference talks by the authors involved are the best, if they’re good speakers.

I’m not sure why I prefer video content. I find my attention relaxes more when watching a talk than it does while reading. Like, I find it more effortful to concentrate on a long article in comparison to watching a talk. (Though usually 1.5x+ speed is a necessity). Also, good talks are generally better written than the average article, and good talks are easier to find than good articles are. Project readmes and webpages will say useless things like “This is our database in Go, here’s how you install it. It’s fast and reliable!”. But a good talk by the author will give me the background and the story. “So, here’s why Postgres wasn’t working for us for this problem we have at Netflix. We really wanted to solve our problem this way. So then we built this new thing to do that and it’s working great! Let me show you the weird parts we’re really proud of…”.

Text is great for reference. But I could listen to technology stories like that - telling the “why” of what people have made all day long.

I am the total opposite. The best way for me to learn is picking the useful text pieces I need right now and use them. Watching a video my brain does not actually focus on every detail, it drifts off

And let me add: I have been reading all my life and while I can skim through even a long text to decide if it's worthy of a longer read, this process is way harder with video.

Even if reading about new topics is harder than watching videos about new topics, it says nothing about the relative efficiency of learning from text or video.

The problem is that the ability to create that functionality - a robust video editor, let alone the sophisticated image processing- is poorly suited to the device itself. Art is intrinsically valuable, and I love shooting on my camera and my phone. But it doesn't really translate into a level of literacy with desktop systems to create whatever the next generation of computing might be.

I bet that the number (or even percentage) of people building those tools has increased too.

Creating high quality video or photos still poses a far higher barrier than simple text. The acquisition hardware (camera) is a trivial step, it's everything else that involves a huge amount of work.

It's a trivial step now. At no point did I say it wasn't a lot of work. But instead of having to create a web page to show off my creative works, I can focus on the work I want to do - take/edit/share pictures.

I just get annoyed when people call these devices consumption only. I could say the same thing about computers when many people only play games on them. These devices are what the person makes of them.

I agree with you, as a parent i witness how my child uses his technology. I did think to mention that we might have biases, as technologists our world view is dominated by technology. My child has a ipad and i have a few computers and game consoles in house. By observing me my child sees how i use technology.

I agree with you personally. For me, it's easy to gather my thoughts into sentences and paragraphs, and I'd rather learn Markdown and Hugo (or LaTeX!) than edit a video.

But that isn't some kind of law of nature - it isn't true for everybody. There's a significant group of people who find it much easier to use video or voice and powerful tools have arisen to help them.

For example, the TikTok video editor gets people started quickly and lets them learn as they go. I'd really encourage you to watch a tutorial to see how easy and surprisingly powerful it is.

I also think its much faster to get information back out of text than it is to watch a video.

But isn't the topic being discussed technology? Being a video creator or painter using Krita is being an artist, not a tech person.

There is no doubt that modern technology has enabled people to realise a lot of things they woul dneve rhave been able to, such as creating a movie using tools available in your pocket.

However, the original post was about learning technology. I.e. understanding computers. The difference between being a mechanic and someone using a car to drive to the grocery store.

The problem is that that the term "digital native" implies that the person understands how computers work. One might argue that the term actually should mean something else, but I argue that would make it an even less useful term. Do we call people who has drivers licenses "motorised vehicle natives"?

Matwood - This post speaks to how we often look at the 90s with rose-colored lenses and often see the computers as better. As much as I'm a collector of older machines and the tech of the era, I can also admit that things were more simplistic, slow, and with plenty of barrier-to-entry. Simple example, the first iPhone did not even have video capability. Right before the 2008 release, nobody was walking around with a video camera in their pocket. You'd had to have carried around a clunky and very expensive camcorder and nobody was just taking videos, anywhere, on a short whim. Even cameras just a few years before that were just terrible. Nostalgia all that we will, the tech was terrible. ASCII warez, and all that stuff was awesome. BBS was awesome, but there is just far more for kids today than what we had.

Another way to look at it is that smartphones and social media let powerful political lobby groups and corporations get ideas and advertising even more directly into people's minds, so that they go forth and replicate them. Who actually starts the majority of trends and what accounts are the most followed? Is it individuals with no other motive than share their creativity? Even in music and art, the mainstream is full of more or less subtle manufactured content. This is propaganda and we're having more of it than ever before.

And no, I'm not blaming the kids who grew up with this and can't know any better (yet). It's the adults who are wrong. They're old enough to know better, but they're content with their positions, they're lazy and they're scared of taking risks by speaking up.

Yeah the creative possibilities have definitely increased. It’s a cycle though, the early podcasters and vloggers look at today’s crowd and can’t believe how easy they have it...”we literally had to run a cli tool to download our podcasts!”, “there was no YouTube let alone iPhones!”

Interestingly enough there still is a high barrier to entry. Nobody wants grainy mobile pictures or low audio quality mobile clips. You'd still need a proper camera and a semi strong computer to cut something that fits modern standards

Oh come on, let's be honest. Open up Instagram and look at what people "create", most of it is memes and image macros. Not even comparable to, as an example, the first years of Deviantart (not what it has become today).

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