Long gone are the days when I spent nearly 8 hours reading a manual while making a stage 1 Gentoo install. Granted, most of those 8 hours were due to the compile times on the computer available to me at the time but a large part of it was spent reading huge walls of text on how to properly install, maintain, upgrade, tweak, work with emerge, etc..

If it were today, I think I’d Youtube it. I’m pretty sure there’s at least one video guide on how to do it. In fact, it’s not just computer stuff that I find myself searching on Youtube. I find myself choosing Youtube instead of googling for an alternative learning method who could possibly have more information than the video. If I then run into an issue that requires further investigation only then do I do a regular Google search for text.

I’m not quite sure what this means, or even if it means anything at all. Is that a sign that I’m getting lazy when it comes to do proper research? Do I need more information than what is present in a simple video? I suppose that will depend on who makes the video and what is chosen to be presented in it. But still..

There’s a world of information on Youtube. Ted is also quite decent, though it has a completely different scope. I’m unaware of any studies presenting conclusive data on whether people (like me) are starting to choose video as a preferred learning method. Someone better than me should probably do it, it sounds exciting.

What could this mean to the way things are traditionally taught across the globe? Will tablets with video content be used instead of books? Would I learn faster/better with video? There are plenty of possibilities and hypothesis about this, I’d like to know more about it.