Peter B. Kaufman, "The Moving Image: A User's Manual" (MIT Press, 2025)

Apr 25, 2025

In this engaging discussion, Peter B. Kaufman, Senior Program Officer at MIT Open Learning, delves into the transformative power of video in communication. He highlights the evolution of video as a key medium, drawing parallels with the printing press. Kaufman shares insights on integrating video into modern education and preserving digital media heritage. He also critiques the disparity between engaging entertainment and educational content, advocating for accessible resources to foster informed, visually literate audiences.

Ask episode

AI Snips

Chapters

Books

Transcript

Episode notes

INSIGHT

Video as New Gutenberg Moment

Video is the dominant communication medium today, surpassing print and text.
Our current moment resembles a Gutenberg moment, but with video replacing text dissemination.

INSIGHT

Moving Image Is In Its Infancy

The moving image is still in its infancy, only 130 years old since the Lumiere brothers' films.
This is like the late 16th century in print, when great things were yet to come.

INSIGHT

Need for Style Guide for Video

The Chicago Manual of Style standardized print communication over time, growing from a small manual to a massive resource.
The moving image needs a similar guide to aid in its scholarly and practical use.

Get the Snipd Podcast app to discover more snips from this episode

Get the app

Video (television, film, the moving image generally) is today’s most popular information medium. Two-thirds of the world’s internet traffic is video. Americans get their news and information more often from screens and speakers than through any other means. The Moving Image: A User's Manual (MIT Press, 2025) is the first authoritative account of how we have arrived here, together with the first definitive manual to help writers, educators, and publishers use video more effectively.

Drawing on decades as an educator, publisher, and producer, MIT’s Peter Kaufman presents new tools, best practices, and community resources for integrating film and sound into media that matters. Kaufman describes video’s vital role in politics, law, education, and entertainment today, only 130 years since the birth of film. He explains how best to produce video, distribute it, clear rights to it, cite it, and, ultimately, archive and preserve it. With detailed guidance on producing and deploying video and sound for publication, finding and using archival video and sound, securing rights and permissions, developing distribution strategies, and addressing questions about citation, preservation, and storage—across the broadest spectrum of platforms, publications, disciplines, and formats—The Moving Image equips readers for the medium’s continued ascendance in education, publishing, and knowledge dissemination in the decades to come. And, modeled in part on Strunk and White’s classic, The Elements of Style, it’s also a highly enjoyable read.

Peter B. Kaufman is Senior Program Officer at MIT Open Learning. He is the author of The New Enlightenment and the Fight to Free Knowledge and founder of Intelligent Television, a video production company that works with cultural and educational institutions around the world.

Caleb Zakarin is editor at the New Books Network.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/communications