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发表于 2010-7-29 22:17:31
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TOPIC: ISSUE7 - "The video camera provides such an accurate and convincing record of contemporary life that it has become a more important form of documentation than written records."
Videos are commonly used to record contemporary lifes, especially when compined with the application of Internet.However, video records are not all that perfect as people now expect them to be. Besides, such records have some disadvantages comparing to written records, and can not be properly used without the help of written records, making it less important than written records.
It is undeniable that video records have certain advantages over written ones.It is more convenient in most cases.Many cell phones owned by people today have at least 1 camera installed, which means they can record what they are experiencing anywhere at any time, and this capability will not be crippled by stress because cameras don't feel those kind of feelings that can make hands tremble thus slowing down the speed of typing or writing.Another advantage of video records is that most records in such form are intuitive, and does not depend on languages.Usually video footage can be shared with people speak different languages.One need not to know most languages in the world in order to catch the main idea of most video footages uploaded by people from all over the world,especially when those video records are designed to be so.
However, unlike what people tend to believe, video records are not as accurate and convincing as written records.It can be edited easily through computer softwares, just think of what Holywood stunts could achieve.Also,many videos on the Internet are obviously faked ,especially the ones of UFO.Some people even do such editings for fun.Accuracy is another problem.I once saw someone trying to estimate the instantanious turn rate of a jet fighter through video footages on the Internet, and the conclusion they get are quite different from written records which are recorded by extremely accurate and reliable INS installed on the fighter.Apparently it is the video records that lacks accuracy because of several reasons like interference,distortion of lens, rotation and focus of the camera, and flaws of sensors used inside,etc. Written records are more accurate and convincing than video records and are intensively used in areas like engineering, science and law, where video records seldom step in.
Additionally, video records lack the ability to present the essence of their contents like written records.An unique property of camera is that it records everything fall into its sight. This property could prove to be useful in some applications such as surveillance,but it also means that video records are redundant, resulting in serious defects.Firstly they are sometimes difficult to analysis.Records taken by surveillance cameras suffer so much from redundancy that people have been using computers and complex algorithms that turn video records into written form to extract what had happened from these records.Secondly redundancy also means video records are more difficult to store and transmit, comparing to written records.The sentence "I went to school this morning"only takes several bytes of storage space and no more than 1 second to be sent to a website like facebook, yet video records of such an event typically require several MBs to store and several minutes to upload.Thirdly, records can sometimes be extremely inconvinient to use without the help of written records, especially when indexing and searching services are needed.It is very easy to input and process texts than images and videos with the help of computers and networks.We can type keywords into Google to search for everything related, but typing key frames of video records into a search engine is an entilely different matter, and is still technically unavailable.Even Youtube use written titles for indexing and searching. All these defects weakened the importance of video records as documents.
Putting together, although video records do have their power over written records, they are not as accurate and convincing as people expected or even written records, suffers from redundancy of information, lacking the ability to capture the essense of things, and inconvenient to use without the help of written records.Important as video records are, they are in no way more important than written records. |
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