Michael Wesch an assistant professor of Cultural Anthropology at Kansas State University, has made this wonderful video. A quick run down on Web tech and how it changes the world. This video is so good I think I might start my next media theory class with it.
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Yes, I’m thinking I’ll start my next class by showing this, too! Though I’m curious as to whether it’s too fast for students who aren’t already familiar with the ideas – I also have many students for whom English is a second langauge, so the language alone might be too fast. I absolutely love the video, anyway.
Jill, I agree it is fast especially for people who are not familiar with what is happening. But, I like the speed for two reasons, one it can be slowed down (the point, that we can interrupt media) and two it reflects an aesthetic style of new media towards speed. As far as the language goes I wonder if it could be subtitled?? (Thanks for the original post by the way)
Overstating the significance of Web 2.0…
This video is very popular among technophiles, as its ranking on Technorati demonstrates, but while I enjoy using Web 2.0 technologies as much as the next person, the sunny optimism of this video and the absence of a wider social perspective on the phe…
Agreed the video can be techno-utopian, something I try to guard against. But I think we should consider how the web has significantly altered the public sphere. As Buzz Machine points out, 14 million Americans use the “read-write” web to engage in political discussions. Now this is American biased, so there are problems with this analysis in a global sense. And, I wouldn’t want to claim that the revolution is coming, but I would argue that the web has given greater access to people to enter the public sphere. Sure this access is unevenly distributed, but power has always been so. Compared to previous models of reading, writing and publication though, I’ll choose the potential of the web. The question I think now becomes how to use this potential.