I love YouTube in many ways. I love the fact that it’s an everyman’s platform. I love the fact that there are virtually no gatekeepers there.

But those things mean that, like the internet itself, you can’t believe everything you read, hear, or see, there.

There are some subtopics and real world processes that lend themselves to learning from video. YouTube is great for how-to stuff.

But video is often a highly inefficient way of absorbing detailed information.

If I am reading from a text, I can take it at my own speed, slowing down or speeding up intuitively and unconsciously as I read; I can move forward or back through the text, should I find a passage difficult or need to clarify an issue. In many cases, I can use an index or other search tools to quickly find precisely what I need to know.

Horses for horses, as they used to say.

I like to use the tool that fits the job. Video is great for some things. But for investigating complex or confounding topics, I’ll take a book or a blog or an article from someone who has taken the time to lay out his facts and thoughts coherently and, if expertise is an issue, whose credentials I can quickly investigate… all by reading.