You may remember this scene from Jurassic Park. Scrub to minute 2:32 and watch from that point on (go on, I’ll wait for you):
OK, now the point I want to make is that humans and other predators like T. rex have evolved to notice movement. Imagine early humans on the ancient plains of Africa scanning the horizon for any motion that might warn them of danger or the opportunity for food. Anything hopping behind a tree or flitting through the grass caught our ancestors’ eyes. Their very survival depended on distinguishing motion that indicated something of interest or something that could be ignored such as rocks or leaves blowing in the wind.
We are hard-wired to be fascinated with moving pictures. Furthermore, we are experts at analyzing movements, whether we realize it or not.
If you watched the TED talk by Chris Anderson in the previous post (if you didn’t, please do), you heard some startling statistics: “Humanity watches 80 million hours of YouTube every day. Cisco actually estimates that, within four years, more than 90 percent of the web’s data will be video….Video is high band-width for a reason. It packs a huge amount of data, and our brains are wired to decode it.” Read that again: “more than 90 percent of the web’s data will be video”. These data have been updated. Google sites, driven mainly by YouTube viewings, had 146 million unique viewers in just the U.S. who watched 16 billion videos in March 2012 alone (comScore Video Metrics). People are definitely watching a lot of online videos.
Why? As Anderson explains in his video, even though it may be faster to read the information we seek, we seem to prefer to view it. It’s in our genes to seek information about our surroundings by watching for movement.
The TED talks demonstrate another important point. People are fascinated with TED talks. They are riveting. Even the ones in which the speaker is not showing any slides. One of the most popular is by Jill Bolte Taylor, a brain researcher, who studied her own stroke as it happened (here’s the link). She shows a few slides, but that’s not what draws people in. It’s seeing her body language and hearing her voice describing her experience that makes the video so fascinating. The other reason is that she’s describing some amazing ideas and insights that spark the audience’s imagination. It’s a powerful combination.
Scientists wishing to get their message out (about their latest research finding, an environmental issue, an important method to be shared) should take note of these points:
1. Humans are hard-wired to gather information from audio-visual sources (moving pictures, if you like).
2. A huge number of people are searching for information on the internet in the form of video.
3. Linking audio-visual information with ideas that stimulate the imagination is a powerful combination.
Scientists, as a group, are pretty smart people. We should be able to figure out how to use these insights to create effective and powerful videos that will reach a wide audience. The question I have is, why have scientists been so slow to catch onto this?
I hope to explore these ideas more in coming posts. Stay tuned….