I do, and you probably do as well – because of the backspace key, Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V, and other handy organizational/editing tools. Even a rudimentary text editor provides functionality that most A/V editing software can’t match: the ability to isolate segments of thought, reorganize them, take parts out and insert more sensible things instead, and reconnect them coherently.

Try clipping up a video like your average competent writer reorganizes an essay or blog entry, and you get something nearly unwatchable (e.g. Fog of War).

Text will remain dominant throughout the 21st century because it affords someone the opportunity to refine and polish their thoughts before presenting them. No visual media provides this ease of versatility to people working in the medium.

If anything, the fact that so many people interact with the Internet suggests an increasing importance for written text, and thus a reason for more people to want to be literate. Whereas your average TV viewer could get by without being very literate, someone who interacts with Youtube will engage in text keyword-based searches, and more involved users might even write scripts for video ideas.

And no, “kids jumping around on couches or doing other adolescent stuff and filming themselves doing it” will not shatter the utility of text somehow. Kids have been jumping around on couches and acting stupid in order to amuse and interest each other for about as long as there’s been leisure time for adolescents, and the fact that they now capture it on film to giggle over later doesn’t somehow negate the usefulness of text.

We haven’t returned to a print-dominant culture, but we’ve partially escaped from the feverish broadcast rumor mill.

So “written” means “recoverable”, not “textual”.

There’s something I want to express about this statement, but I don’t seem to have the means. It’s just … it’s …

No. Not happening. And I don’t even know why.

Strictly speaking, Youtube, screencaps, cell-phone cameras, etc, are visual cultures, not written ones. This has profound implications for the overwhelming domination that text has had in our modern, western society these last 250-odd years. We are likely to see its overthow, and not before time.

Bill O-Reilly actually believes that there’s something ethically wrong when someone else plays back today something that he said a month ago, or even yesterday. He calls it “Nazi behavior”, “stalking”, etc. etc. It’s impossible to know for sure what kind of reality he’s coming from, but his indignation is real. He’s been spoiled for a long time and has a tremendous sense of entitlement, as if he really IS The Common Man.

Lawrence Lessig has been way out in front of the examination of these issues, but even he underestimates the magnitude of the changes taking shape. Some of the most politically radical discarded notions of the 19th century will require reexamination as the world economy moves from capitalist controlled atoms to socially controlled bits.