However, the Youtube videos scare me. They feel like Black Mirror episodes. There is some eerie quality to them: they’re too perfect, too optimistic, too uncritical, too polished.
I believe that this might be a problem for greater developer adoption. I myself was very interested in starting to develop on the ICP, but after watching some of the videos I got a bad feeling…
These videos are obviously partly technical documentation, and partly PR. And of course PR is polished and uncritical. Rest assured that the people working on the Internet Computer are a diverse bunch of critically minded people. And while most of them a great humans, none of them is perfect.
Yes! Especially the videos at dfinity dot org /technicals, but the launch event video too, in a somewhat different way. The videos are all so over-produced, with all artificial light, and never a live audience, and rarely an unscripted conversational format. Every one of the technical videos shows one poor soul plodding onto a lonely stage with a solitary chair, sitting alone in a room reading a script to the camera with occasional cuts to another camera angle floating around next to them in creepy ways. It makes it look like all the people involved (not only the people on camera) are being held at gunpoint and forced to make the videos! Very disturbing, and yet the content is about all the amazing IC technology. They really need to fix this. It’s awfully embarrassing.
FWIW, those Inside the Internet Computer YouTube videos don’t give me any depressing vibes. They’re rather soothing and the excellent production helps me focus on the content being presented!!
It’s probably a difference in cultural sensibilities. I’m in the Silicon Valley area, and here I believe many or most people would find them embarrassing.
Well, you could try posting one of the technical talks, say the one on message routing or on the peer-to-peer layer, to your local facebook friends and take a vote about the video production between:
the excellent, soothing production helped me focus on the tech content
feels creepy, like the poor guy’s being forced to sit alone and read a script
The absence of a crowd might be a sign of the covid times. But I agree that there are big cultural differences around the world and what is barely perfect enough for some might be massively over-scripted for others. Meh, I’m sure there will be a diverse set of videos as well over time. Do you have suggestions for other formats? Who wants to watch Lex Friedman interviewing @nomeata ?
Good point about covid. I’m no video producer, but my main suggestion would be to have someone there to ask questions, just to be another human for the speaker to look at and respond to rather than having to deliver a presentation to a camera lens. Heck, pay Lex Fridman to interview them! Also, make it primarily unscripted. If some parts need to be scripted, have someone read those bits as a voiceover for slides. Don’t ever show video of someone reading, it’s just not a good look unless they happen to be a highly practiced and charismatic speaker.
