Is there anything Kansas State professor Michael Wesch can't do? If the name isn't familiar to you, he's the anthropologist who produced the brilliant "The Machine Is Us/ing Us" video that portrayed the impact of Web 2.0 on not only technology but culture, and did it all in five riveting minutes.
This week, Wesch posted a presentation he gave last month at the Library of Congress. Entitled, "An Anthropological Introduction to YouTube," it uses dozens of consumer generated clips to present a compelling case for the far reaching impact of social media on world cultures and connected societies.
This video clocks in at almost an hour, so you may want to save it for your lunch hour -- or after hours, for that matter -- but I can guarantee that it will be an hour well-spent.
[Feed and email readers, please click through for the video.]
If you don't have a full hour and want to skip around to find portions that seem interesting, here is the timeline:
0:00 Introduction, YouTube’s Big Numbers
2:00 Numa Numa and the Celebration of Webcams
5:53 The Machine is Us/ing Us and the New Mediascape
12:16 Introducing our Research Team
12:56 Who is on YouTube?
13:25 What’s on Youtube? Charlie Bit My Finger, Soulja Boy, etc.
17:04 5% of vids are personal vlogs addressed to the YouTube community, Why?
17:30 YouTube in context. The loss of community and “networked individualism” (Wellman)
18:41 Cultural Inversion: individualism and community
19:15 Understanding new forms of community through Participant Observation
21:18 YouTube as a medium for community
23:00 Our first vlogs
25:00 The webcam: Everybody is watching where nobody is (“context collapse”)
26:05 Re-cognition and new forms of self-awareness (McLuhan)
27:58 The Anonymity of Watching YouTube: Haters and Lovers
29:53 Aesthetic Arrest
30:25 Connection without Constraint
32:35 Free Hugs: A hero for our mediated culture
34:02 YouTube Drama: Striving for popularity
34:55 An early star: emokid21ohio
36:55 YouTube’s Anthenticity Crisis: the story of LonelyGirl15
39:50 Reflections on Authenticity
41:54 Gaming the system / Exposing the System
43:37 Seriously Playful Participatory Media Culture
47:32 Networked Production: The Collab. MadV’s “The Message” and the message of YouTube
49:29 Poem: The Little Glass Dot, The Eyes of the World
51:15 Conclusion by bnessel1973
52:50 Dedication and Credits (Our Numa Numa dance)
Big thanks to my Aussie mate Gavin Heaton for pointing me to the link. Read his post about Wesch's latest for commentary far more insightful than my own.
