Videoblogging and the co-construction of users and technology.
When Mica goes to work or visits friends in Manhattan, she takes a small digital videocamera, and shoots video of anything that captures her attention. At night, she makes little movies and puts them on her Typepad blog. Mica is a videoblogger.
Videoblogging isn’t made easy for Mica though. After lots of practice it still takes her a while to post an entry. Most videobloggers use 3 or 4 different programs to create a post. There are bandwidth concerns, and discussions about people linking to video. Because it’s complex, not many people post regular videoblog entries. Videoblogging prety much stands where the web was in 1996, despite the fact that the basic technical capabilities have been available for years.
When a lot of different elements interlock in complex way to form a system, a useful way of untangling the complexities of the system is to think of it as an ecology. In an ecology, elements depend on each other. The ecology of videoblogging is a complex one, and there are many, interlocked reasons why videoblogging hasn’t taken off in a big way yet. Bandwidth limits videoblogging as much or more as the lack of simple tools does. The lack of an audience is a problem, as is the lack of examples and easy viewing tools.
Bandwidth, authoring tools, audience, viewing tools, specialized hosting services, language and the lack of standards are all parts of the videoblogging ecology. The challenge is to stimulate the development of the crucial parts of the ecology, after which the other parts will fall in place. This is called a tipping point - videoblogging will not become popular slowly, it will become popular suddenly. As a comparison, on Plasticbag.org there was a good writeup recently of the audioblogging ecology. The videoblogging ecology is still in an even earlier stage. But things are happening.
Linking is a crucial part of videoblogging. Videos suck up attention (although less so than audio - the images seem to make it easier to watch while thinking about something else, bringing back your attention when needed). It’s hard to skip parts you’re not interested in. It’s hard to scan (although fast forward kinda works). Its hard to discuss a specific part of a video if you can’t link.
The technology of linking into video has been around for years, but was always neglected. For a while now, Jon Udell, realizing the importance of linking to stimulate conversations, has been reverse-engineering linking into video and audio. He’s had some success: now, if you’re listening to audio at the Gilmore Gang, there is a little tool that makes it easy to link to a certain point within the audio, so you can comment on it. Example: "Jon continues to explain the need for random-access players and supporting URLs [clip] and standards and why he thinks players will ultimately become authoring tools." Even better: you don’t need a streaming server to provide this functionality: a simple HTTP server can do this. Linking to a point within a video stream is a bit more complex (with the different formats and all), but it can be done. Here’s a technical writeup, and here’s an experimental web-based tool that lets you link to a point within a Realplayer video.
Bandwidth is a major challenge. Videofiles are large, so bandwidth can become a problem. Getting hit with bandwidth charges (most hosts charge about US$1 per additional Gig) is no fun. Video on the web will never scale the way television scales: with TV, it doesn’t matter how big the audience is. That’s a constraint, but constraints are not necessarily bad. We just have to stop thinking of videoblogging as a copy of what movies or television is doing. We can’t copy them, and we shouldn’t.
Meanwhile, we still need to be able to control bandwidth. It shouldn’t be too hard, but just as linking within a media stream, no easy open source product seems to exist. I’ve been thinking about using Apache logs to log bandwidth usage, and then using PHP (or your favourite language) to dynamically serve a different size videofiles (using SMIL) depending on how much bandwidth is left. Ideas are welcome. Maybe Apache’s mod_throttle is another part of the solution?
Once we get the bandwidht managing problem under control, pretty much any old host can be used. We don’t really need streaming servers and all that.
Peer to peer is another partial solution for the bandwidth problem. It lets you share large files without eating up your server bandwidth. BitTorrent is a P2P system that lets you distribute small files that, when a user clicks on a link, download movies from other people - not from your server. So you don’t get charged for bandwidth. BitTorrent is still a geeks game though. Luckily a new project called BattleTorrent is trying to change that.
RSS enclosures are a part of RSS that lets you embed bittorrent files in your newsfeed. This means that someone can subscribe to your newsfeed and, if they want, automatically start downloading video overnight so it’s ready for them in the morning. Adam Curry has been experimenting with this a lot. Personal TV channels, a term coined by David Winer.
Video formats and players are a confusing mess as well (Real, Quicktime and Windows Media, and the open source folks), but the reality is: we can all see most of the stuff out there, if we have broadband. For me, this is less of an issue, and certainly not an element of the ecology that can be easily fixed.
The first person I ever heard actually utter the words "participatory journalism" was Drazen Pantic ("Politics happens on the couch"). I actually have it on video. I met Drazen Pantic for the first time in a gallery in Soho while talking about videoblogging. The dream is this: if people all over the world have a media outlet, they can share a lot of political information. Drazen is working on a project to do just that, called Open4all.info. The possibilities of videoblogging to make a social and political difference are there. Stuart Hughes is a BBC journalist, and his videoblog gives a whole new perspective to the news. Steve Garfield videoblogged the DNC convention. Talk to US invites people from all over the world to send in 30 second video messages to talk to the people in the US. Remember the revolution will not be televised? It might be videoblogged. If you like books, check out Joe Trippi ’s The Revolution Will Not Be Televised. Be the media!
The co-construction of users and technology.
Here’s the point I’m trying to make with this article. When Robert Fulton invented the steamboat in 1807, he didn’t just solve the problem of getting a steam engine to propel his boat. The technical pieces of the puzzle had been around for a while. He also solved a legal problem by negotiating with the New York state legislature as to what speed was required for his steamboat. He knew that his low-pressure boat would have limited speed, so he convinced the legislature to modify the terms under which he would be awarded a monopoly for transportation on the Hudson River. (p. 176 Shaping Technology, Building Society.)
The videoblogging challenge is both technical and social. Not separately technical and social, the two are intimately connected. You cannot develop the technology without developing the community.
Here’s what’s important: the dream of IP video and audio empowering users doesn’t have to happen. It’s not a technologically necessecary outcome. That’s the mistake many of us geeks make - believing that technology drives history. Every little experiment we do is a small step on the co-creation of users and technology, and the values we put in those experiments will continue to reverberate for years. Empowering people. Simple technology. No high production values. Back and forth community video. Moments and conversations. Getting to know each other.
When Joho the Blog blogged a video reply to Charles Cooper’s article at CNET, as an experiment, not everyone agreed on the effectiveness of that approach. Clearly, we’re still figuring out the language of videoblogging. This is a time of experimenting, of pioneers. Here they are: Mica Scalin (posts a LOT), Steve Garfield (quickly becoming the poster boy for videoblogging), Steve’s mom, The Dane, Charlene, Jay Dedman (pushing videoblogging into the mainstream - here’s a long videointerview with him), Shannon, Adrian Miles (MIT experiments), Tim Hall, Eric Rice, Peter Van Dijck, Chris (the human dog), Juston Johnson (started and runs vidblogs.com, a collection of videoblogs ), Stuart Hughes (a BBC journalist and videoblogger), Olsen (proving the very real connection between videoblogging and karaoke), Andreas Haugstrup Pedersen (giving an academic perspective), Daily Experience (trying to be a daily videoblog), video-link (a Japanese videoblog), disinfotainment (streaming videoblog by Charles Eicher with commentary on Japanese and US media), videoblog.tv. Then there are collective video blogs: Tropism (an arty collective in the Nederlanths), vidblogs.com. I am forgetting some here… You also may want to check out unmediated.org, an excellent collective blog tracking the tools that decentralize the media, http://demandmedia.net, found video from all over the web, Videoblogging.info, a new site that wants to aggregate videoblogs. I probably forgot a few. Videoblogging is getting lots of attention in the press as well. If you’d rather read a (free) book: Dan Gillmor ’s We the Media is a good start, or buy Joe Trippi ’s The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.
Finally, How users matter is a great (social science) book relevant to the title of this article - the co-construction of users and technology. A must read.
(And then I haven’t even mentioned moblogging video with cellphones.)
August 8th, 2004 at 10:12 am
This is a very helpful and inspiring explanation. Funny, i probably do post video more frequently than most but understand the tech junk the least. I am just thrilled to have the chance to put theory into practice.
August 8th, 2004 at 11:12 am
[shameless plug] I don’t know at which point a tool like this http://www.arstdesign.com/articles/avs could help the creation and posting of link to clips, and/or provide alternative lower bandwidth related ways to show video content on web pages. Well, you get the idea.
August 9th, 2004 at 12:22 am
Technical issues and the deaf
Peter has taken time to collect some of the technical issues in videoblogging, and Rob Wilks videoblogs in sign language.
August 9th, 2004 at 2:14 am
This little essay is a touchtstone.
“You cannot develop the technology without developing the community.”
Yes yes yes
August 9th, 2004 at 3:04 am
All I can say is thank you for this. I’m so inspired now to get video blogging again!
August 9th, 2004 at 7:08 pm
Via Guide to Ease, une brochettes de vidéoblogs. Joho the Blog Mica Scalin Steve Garfield Steve’s mom The Dane Charlene Jay Dedman long videointerview with him) Shannon Adrian Miles Tim Hall Eric Rice Peter Van Dijck Chris (the human dog)…
September 9th, 2004 at 10:18 am
Videoblogging and the co-construction of users and technology
Peter van Dijck summarizes the first couple months of the videoblogging mailing list….
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