TED Talks are popular videos from the 15-20 minute presentations given by elite speakers at its annual event. They usually bring well-argumented and/or funny messages accross and TED's visual flair helps to make these videos inspirational and exciting to watch.
Now Big Think joins the fun with short 3 minute video interviews of public intellectuals in areas such as politics, law, science etc. Big Think is positioning itself as the ''Youtube of ideas'' and aims to trigger debates about issues that matter in this world. It claims to take a more bottom-up approach compared to TED. Another site offering intellectual videos is Fora TV. It is comparable with Big Think, though their videos are longer. All sites aim to implement social networking features, though I'm not sure if that is something to be so happy about...
Big think is not short of coverage upon its launch in part because former Harvard President Larry Summers is a minority investor. Click the links below for more on Big Think and other players in the intellectual video arena.
I checked out the site and thought I'd try and find a video related to something light: life and death. Unfortunately, there are no experts in this field yet?! I watched a video interview with Richard Branson on ''giving back to society'', but was quite disappointed. I think 3 minutes is very short to really say something and the speakers don't really seem comfortable either. Moreover, the added value of video becomes less when the message is so short without any backgrounds or slides to show. So great ''IDEA'' with potential but still poorly executed in in my opinion.
