Online Video Suddenly Gets Brainy

David Kesmodel writes "Several online-video efforts are under way that offer a more cerebral alternative to the typical fare seen on the Web, the Wall Street Journal reports. The ambitious Fora.tv, for example, intends to establish relations with all of the lecture series from the nation's scores of think tanks, civic groups, bookstores and the like, and then put tapes of their speeches and panel discussions online in an easily searchable fashion."

Comments

MIT Open CourseWare

[The Media Mechanic]

MIT's Open CourseWare has online videos of undergraduate and graduate course lectures of actual math, engineering, physics professors... Many of whom are top researchers in their fields. This is about as brainy as you can get!

For example...

http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Physics/8-01Physics-IFal l1999/VideoLectures/index.htm

Re:i wonder

[Drew McKinney]

It has already for some time. "Big Media" calls the phenomena of short internet videos and blurbs "infosnacking". Blogs, aggregate sites and sites like Youtube are included as sources of infosnacks.

CNN and MSNBC have both tried versions of online blogs and infosnack videos with little commercial success. A few years ago MSNBC launched its big campaign to many oohs and aahs from insiders but few people on the 'outside' paid little attention. While small internet news productions like Rocketboom took off from such content. It seems industry still hasn't caught on.

PBS did a great documentary on this called the "News Wars" - i think part 4 of 4 or 3 of 4 is where they talk about infosnacking.

new trend, but not *really* new.

[morethanapapercert]

I have been watching two sites regularly for "brainy TV". Both consist of generally very good public speakers giving a lecture or presentation about important concepts. The first I found was TED which focuses more on future concepts, developing trends in society and that sort of forward looking stuff. The second was one I first discovered on my local PBS station (TV Ontario) and later hunted down online. The show is Big Ideas which features mainly the most skilled Canadian College and University lecturers talking about the subjects that they teach.

I particularly liked Jacalyn Duffin's lecture about the history of medicine during the Rational Movement and it's relation to the scientific method in making a diagnosis.

If anyone knows of any other good webcast sites (other than the MIT open courseware project, which I already have.) please let me know.