The video camera provide such an accurate and convincing record of contemporary life that it has become a more important form of  documentation than written record.

 The speaker indicates that video camera can record our history and big events in a vivid and accurate way. It has become an indispensable and an important way to doing documentation. And its importance even has outweighed the form of written record. As far as I am concerned, I think the video camera indeed provide a very direct way to record life which give us vivid images. But the traditional way-recording through writing, is also important. It is very difficult to do a comparison which is more important.

  First, I admit that record with a video camera is a very popular way to record what are happening today. With the development of new technology, getting a video camera is not as difficult as before, and the price of video cameras is also coming down. So, we can see a lot of people would like to take a video camera with them everywhere. From professional journalists of TV station to ordinary persons, they use video take down what’s our world are like. Recording with video camera often give us great visual impact. For example, when the two planes were hit the Twin Tower successfully in 11^th ,September, 2001 in New York, the best way to know the whole things better is turn on TV and see the on-location reports. Only video cameras can provide us the living broadcast. And we can see what was going on there and how the rescue team doing there. From the thick smokes and the panic expression of people, we were shock and felt outrage at terrorists. Similarly, when big earthquake was happened in Sichuan China 12^th,May, 2008, people all of the world are see the images communicated by satellite signals which captured by video cameras. The miserable pictures gave us a deep impact and aroused deep sympathy from our hearts. In a word, video cameras provide a unique way to record the history and events. It gives us direct and objective images.

  But video cameras also have its disadvantages. Although it is very convenient to carry with, but its materials is not easy to keep. It is easily be erased and be lost. As time goes by, the quality of the images will decreased or even getting vague. On the contrary, written record is better for preserve. Second, video cameras can not describe subjective feeling or psychological active of people. As we all know, sometimes we can not hardly doing judgments from appearance. On the contrary, when people write down their notions ,or subjective feelings, we can feel what they thought and get a deeper understanding of their notions.

  I think some materials are not suitable for video camera to record. For example, when a novelist writing a novel, he/she can only convey his/her notions by writing words.  A novel brings us board imagination through the word. We can feel the psychological activity of the people in a novel. And the novel also can give a virtual world which video camera can not give us. Secondly, when an economists what to explain his economic principles, or when a philosopher want to explain his/her philosophical theory, it is better to write them down . Because their theories is too abstract to understand. Only though writing down in a textbook or a paper, can we gradually grasp the true meaning of their essence of thoughts. 

  From what has been discussed above, I think we can see whether video camera or written record has its own advantages. It provides us different feeling and can not be replaced by the other. So, it is not objective to say which one is more important than the other one. If we want to record our life and history overall and complete, it is better for us to use them side by side.