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My scientific specialty is chronobiology (circadian rhythms and photoperiodism), with additional interests in comparative physiology, animal behavior and evolution. I am not an MD so I cannot diagnose and treat your sleep problems. As well as writing this blog, I am also the Online Discussion Expert for PLoS. This is a personal blog and opinions within it in no way reflect the policies of PLoS. You can contact me at: Coturnix@gmail.com
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Clay Shirky: It's Not Information Overload. It's Filter Failure.
Category: Blogging • Open Science • Technology
Posted on: October 19, 2008 6:27 PM, by Coturnix
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Comments
It would be so nice to know what he had to say about information overload and filter failure. But without a fast connection it is just not possible to watch television online. It would be nice if ScienceBlogs would remember that not everyone has excellent access. Some of us can only afford dial-up or live in areas where dial-up is all there is.
Posted by: oscarzoalaster | October 19, 2008 11:40 PM
oscarzoalaster, you can download the video in mov or flv format (for offline viewing) from the blip.tv page for this video: http://blip.tv/file/1277460/
Posted by: aaron | October 20, 2008 12:23 AM
What oscarzoalaster said.
Yes, I could download that piece from the address so kindly provided but with the 31.2 kbps connection I have it will take a considerable while and I have to deal with the simple fact a lot of videos are virtually impossible to get, those I can download often can't be watch in anything but five second increments and even if everything goes my way it will take better than an hour of dedicating the connection to that single task to get it.
I can download and read the transcript of an hour video in a few minutes. If people are kind enough to give a quick description of the video and why they think it is important I can usually get the gist of it. But a video link, particularly one which has little or nothing suggesting why I should take the time to download, or why it is important, tends to get skipped.
I have spent too much time already downloading huge video files when people breathlessly claim was absolutely essential to see. Only to find out I have downloaded a cutesy animal trick file I wouldn't give two cents for.
I hear Finland has universal broadband.
The USA, as seems typical for 'the leader of the free world' we are ten to twenty years behind.
Posted by: Art | October 20, 2008 4:27 AM
I could play this fine but wanted to know where in the US can you ONLY get dial-up?
Posted by: teagurl | October 20, 2008 1:15 PM
An example of the hilarious perversity of human life. Lacking the wherewithal to address their connectivity issues, they attack the provision of online video.
Posted by: Don McArthur | October 20, 2008 1:26 PM
@teagurl: Not everyone lives in a major metropolitan area. Outside of those areas broadband is either prohibitively expensive or totally unavailable. I work for an organization the deals with rural infrastructure development, we have field offices that are on dialup because there's simply zero broadband available in their entire congressional district.
Posted by: Rev Matt | October 20, 2008 2:16 PM
@Rev Matt: That's amazing (for probably all the wrong reasons). Thanks for the explanation.
Posted by: teagurl | October 20, 2008 2:26 PM
teagurl inquires: "I could play this fine but wanted to know where in the US can you ONLY get dial-up?"
@Rev Matt correctly noted that some rural areas do not have fast connections available at all. However, in my case, the problem is primarily because I cannot afford to pay for a fast connection. (That I am in a rural area contributes to having a poor-quality dial-up connection though.)
And the Don McArthur trolls: "An example of the hilarious perversity of human life. Lacking the wherewithal to address their connectivity issues, they attack the provision of online video."
Please reread what I wrote. I was not objecting to the provision of online video, I was objecting to the lack of a transcript or synopsis. If there was a transcript or synopsis (an 'abstract') it would be possible to make an informed decision whether it is worth the hour or two, and possibly repeated attempts, needed to download the video. (This is particularly important if the video is in a 'streaming only' format. If that is the case I really want to know the value before I watch it second by second, with minutes of silent inaction between those seconds of video extravaganza.)
Posted by: oscarzoalaster | October 20, 2008 4:26 PM
oscarzoalaster has a very good point.
Posting a video is an easy, quick way to add to a blog content. It is also qualitatively different (a picture is worth a thousand words, a video a million?) - a different mode of communication. Most videos do not come with a transcript, and for a blogger, the point of posting a video is often speed - transcribing takes a long time which, if I have, I would use to write an entirely "my" post made from my own thoughts.
And because audio and video are transforming the Web and communication, it is necessary to make sure that everyone can see them. Thus, providing broadband to large parts of rural America, as well as the developing world, is very important. Both candidates have plans about it.
In the future, I will try to label video-only posts clearly as "video".
Posted by: Coturnix | October 20, 2008 4:38 PM
It's kind of ironic that the talk is about information overload, and here the comments are all about the difficulty of getting that information in the first place.
Posted by: Kurt | October 20, 2008 4:52 PM
"In the future, I will try to label video-only posts clearly as "video"."
That would be a good. But far more useful, short of a transcript, would be a simple note, perhaps just a line or two, with a short description of what the video contains and some estimation of its merit for download if one had to do it over a dial up connection.
ie: A dog doing mildly cute tricks. A two out of ten for merit.
Or: Bill O'Reilly forgets his antidepressants and repeatedly attempts sepiku on the Lincoln memorial steps with a very dull knife. Watch this no matter what it takes. If an eye witness video of the second coming and Armageddon combined were a ten this would be an eleven.
Posted by: Art | October 21, 2008 12:16 PM