Eolake Stobblehouse has a post on text versus video and wonders why he finds text so much more compelling than video when video is so much more immediate. He does, but he’s not sure why. Me, I think I know why, and I posted the following as a comment to his post:

Reading is conceptual; watching video is sensual.

In classical philosophy, the mind is divided into the sense and the intellect. The one deals with sensory input, perceptions, and the images that result from them, and also the images we assemble for ourselves. The latter deals with abstract concepts, which are tied to images but are distinct from them. (You can’t think about triangles as a concept without imagining a triangle, but no specific triangle you can imagine perfectly captures what we mean by the concept of triangularity.)

Reading deals with concepts. Often it moves from concepts to images, but not always. Movies and TV are primarily sensual. They suggest concepts, but do not require them. And so in the order of meaning the written word can be much more focussed, more precise, more crystalline than any movie could possibly be.

In short, in movies the images are precise and the meaning is fuzzy; in writing the concepts are precise and the images are fuzzy. Take your pick.