I know quite a bit about YouTube, but I was still stunned by anthropologist Michael Wesch’s recent presentation for the Library of Congress about why YouTube is meaningful and significant, representing a cultural shift far beyond silly cat videos.
He explains in very compelling and easy-to-understand terms how participatory media is changing how we see ourselves, our communities, and the people around us. And beyond that, how we’ll need to rethink copyright, ethics, privacy, commerce, love, and so on. It’s very inspiring.
People use simple equipment to make short videos that can get extremely popular. At the same time they are very personal. This is a new level of reality TV. As the big TV networks are loosing their viewers the YouTube community and content is growing at an amazing rate! Micheal talks about how this media scape is changing the individual human experience and the world as we know it.
As you can see, my immediate reaction, is to blog it and share it with the people that read this blog. More than that I am getting more attracted to the idea of video-blogging myself, but I haven’t acted too much on that yet. Perhaps I will 
Presented at the Library of Congress, June 23rd 2008. This was tons of fun to present. I decided to forgo the PowerPoint and instead worked with students to prepare over 40 minutes of video for the 55 minute presentation. This is the result.
-Michael Wesch
More info: http://mediatedcultures.net