This is a special post for quick takes by Mati_Roy. Only they can create top-level comments. Comments here also appear on the Quick Takes page and All Posts page.
imagine having a physical window that allowed you to look directly in the past (but people in the past wouldn't see you / the window). that would be amazing, right? well, that's what videos are. with the window it feels like it's happening now, whereas with videos it feels like it's happening in the past, but it's the same
There's a bit of bait-and-switch with the comparison. The magic window is amazing if it sees parts of the past which we're interested in (both time and location control, or event selection). It's much less interesting if it only sees very few parts (well under 0.01%) of the very recent past (last 20-70 years), and only sees the parts that someone happened to capture, which are indexed/promoted enough to come to our attention.