There is a growing divide between the people who are video literate and people who aren’t. It will dictate who leads us, how free we are, what people think, and how people share their lives. It will shape our future more than many realize in the next one hundred years, yet no one discusses it. Let’s start.

Illustration courtesy of Adam Brown

'Why does this matter?'

Most people aren’t making Hollywood films or television – so why does this matter?

The reason video literacy is so important is because the way we communicate is shifting drastically. And the world is shifting to video as our primary means of communication. We will need to be able to create compelling videos that convey essential information in order to get any message across. This is starting to be the case now and will certainly be the case in five to ten years.

Everyone has heard these types of statistics before -- “…an average American watches four hours and 35 minutes a day” (Nielsen) or “the average American home now has more television sets than people.” (AP)

The flip side has more telling statistics – “Nearly half of America’s adults are poor readers, or ‘functionally illiterate” (National Adult Literacy Servery of 1993) and “42 percent of college graduates never read another book for the rest of their lives” (Jenkins Group, Inc.).

Obviously, our world is not moving towards text based communications. And why should it?

The primary way we take in our world is through our senses, not through symbols. Letter and symbol based communications have always been a bandaid in the past because we didn’t have the means to accurately show or simulate the experiences and thoughts we were trying to communicate. Now we do.

We have FaceTime, movie theaters, televisions and YouTube.  We are completely shifting our means of communication that has lasted for hundreds of years within a few decades.

We are shifting to a medium that is more accurate and in tune with how our brains process information. And it is a medium that is also more universal. Images transcend languages. You don’t need to translate a picture.

‘So if the world is communicating with video, what’s the problem? I love watching Glee, Rachel Maddow and panda bears sneezing online.’

The problem doesn’t have to do with consumption (which we are plenty good at that). It has to do with the other side of the two-way exchange in communication.

It’s knowing how to “write” with video.

It’s knowing how to participate and communicate with video.

YouTube has hours of video that is uploaded every second. The majority of that is stuff no one wants to watch. Why? Most of it is incomprehensible or irrelevant.

Video education is going to create a huge divide between the haves and have-nots.

The people who understand and control video production will be the ones dominating the majority of information – no matter if their ideas are any good or not. Just look at the news now.

This isn’t about the cameras – anyone can get those for $200. This isn’t about the computers and editing – if you’ve spent ten minutes with iMovie you know it’s just as easy as writing an email. This is all about learning how to communicate with video.

What you see on YouTube is essentially equal to what would have happened if no one knew how to use words and sentences when the printing press was invented.

‘But how can’t we make good video if we watch almost five hours of video a day?’

It is because we need rules for communication. Just as we need sentences, paragraphs and the beautiful semi-colon; we need structure to video communications as well.

The easy thing about learning to “write” in video is that it is practically innate within us once someone teaches the rules. We’ve watched so much video, we know when something feels right or wrong.

The trick is to learn the sentences, paragraphs and even semi-colons of the video world.

This type of curriculum is slowly sneaking into schools and businesses, but it is outstandingly behind the curve. Video is the most popular means of communication, so why is it reversely the least taught means?

Video literacy is atrocious now. Our population could be so much richer with ideas, concepts and discourse if more of us could effectively incorporate it to its full potential.

In history, there are only a handful of events that have democratized a communications medium. The first was the printing press, which took the control of knowledge from the aristocrats and religious institutions.  It allowed for newspapers to circulate important information uniformly to the public. It allowed for free speech, for us to fight unjust powers and for ideas like democracy to bloom into fruition.

Now, we have video, the most accurate means of communication that conveys information in a way that is hardwired into our brain. It is available for everyone to grasp and utilize. What will we do with it?

If everyone understood the structure of video and participated in its creation; we could be looking at a new age of growth in the arts, in the discussion of ideas and in the power to right the problems we are now facing.

So start the discussion by commenting below.

Resources for statistics :

http://www.usatoday.com/life/television/news/2006-09-21-homes-tv_x.htm
http://www.readfaster.com/education_stats.asp
http://www.jenkinsgroupinc.com

Zack Wilson is a creative media producer based in New York City with a strong focus in dramatic narrative structure, emerging media technologies and international cultures. Visit zackwilson.com for more blog articles and to see his work.