More features - less information

The evolution of the internet frightens me.

One sees more and more videos and animations - both in pop-up windows and embedded deep in the html code. They interact with flash and javascript and css and downloadable fonts, and the designers will have as many tools they can ever imagine to make the pages look just like they want them.

And what is disappearing?

Text.

There is less and less text on the average page. There is admittedly a saying that a picture is worth a thousand words. However, only good pictures are worth a thousand words. Many pictures contain absolutely no interesting information at all. The net result of a video interview of twenty minutes is often less than the same interview written down. In the video interview, you are not able to copy and paste text to your note book for further thoughts. You are not able to quickly browse back to what was said five minutes ago to compare to what is being said now. You are not able to search for keywords. You are not able to browse through irrelevant parts and speed up the information uptake so you can absorb two interviews in the same time as one. In the video interview, you can spend hours trying to hear what that foreign name was, so you finally can look it up.

Animations, sounds, video - it is prettier than text, but it contains less information and it takes more time, and if there is anything that is limited in man's life, it is the available time.