Or How YouTube got its groove back (for me anyway).
These days I jump from one video platform to another and because it was Seesmic that first wooed me to the possibility of online video I’ve tended to ignore YouTube. I’ve just become convinced that this was a mistake. I did have a little alarm bell go off a while ago when I found out about this project to use a community to make a zombie movie. YouTube having a community was news to me. All I ever saw were a handful of good videos, a lot of mess and a truly anti-community inspired comment fueled torrent of badly spelled abuse. And yet here was Bryony tapping into her community on YouTube. I had to wait for Seesmic to come along and get in there early to find something similar.
One of several videos that I did first appreciate through YouTube was The Machine is Us/ing Us. I’ve been following Mike Wesch’s work since, as it taps into the reading I’ve been doing around Ken Robinson (I never bother linking directly to Ken Robinson’s website because ironically it’s hideous and a pain to use), the Network of Networks I’m involved with, the Cool Curve and a small large stack of notes I’ve been making. Today I saw a new video go up on the Digital Ethnography website and it’s a keeper.
It’s not short though. In fact it’s almost an hour long, but trust me. If you only watch one thing today watch An Anthropological Introduction to YouTube. Don’t be put off by the length or title. It’s important, funny and heart warming.
It covers the impact of YouTube and the importance of how we connect, the importance of Creative Commons and self generated organisation as the new model for a distribution network that we’ve created.
It also points out how all that money ($3.6 million) spent on Super Bowl ads was beaten by a guy in his basement in Kansas collaborating with another guy on the Ivory Coast for no money at all. This I think is key to what everyone involved in Web 2.0/New Media/Social Media is attempting to do. It’s not rocket science, it’s simply bringing the right people together at the right time regardless of geogrpahy and timezones, ignoring the traditional routes which usually hemorrhage money.
Mike defines media as the mediating of human relationships and that line alone made me happy to be working in this field. That he went on to talk about networked individualism and the importance of the invisible audience leading to context collapse was just gravy. This is really important observational work into a medium that is largely ignored, treated like traditional TV or just ripped off my marketeers.
Mike understands and more importantly manages to reveal the paradox that with online video everybody is watching at the same time that nobody is there, that the most private becomes the most public and how wonderful that can be. He also offers a very concise explanation of the ‘go die in a fire’ comment storms that put so many people off YouTube.
And despite the length and that this could have been a very traditional style TED conference video, Mike roped in his students and broke the talk up into endearing but important work culled from YouTube itself (and he even finds a way to allow his students some fun, extra credit and thanks).
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:
I love the tiny window this gives you. It’s still not quite the video equivalent of Twitter, but it could get there once people find a way to @ one another and follow the conversations. Not that I think that’s a priority. Right now it’s just fun to see what can be achieved in such a confined space. Christian as always is way out ahead:
When I logged on for the first time it was a little like a video conversation yearbook. All the familiar faces where there already. I noticed that while most people were faltering with the built in limitations of the platform Christian was already on his 8th page of videos! I mentioned this to Jess and her reply was:
He’s like Monkey: irrepressible!
It’s not a bad comparison. He’s a little wayward at times, but makes for an excellent ambassador. If I was starting any video related platform I’d ensure he had an invite from day one. He brings an audience and certainly puts a new place through its paces.
Introduces two characters you really care about in its tiny running time (something most 2 hour movies neglect) and fills in just enough backstory to flesh out the characters while also pushing the action forward.
It stars kids that can actually act, surprised the fuck out of me and made me want to see more.
12 minutes long.
Mia Wasikowska who plays Sarah Jane will be Alice in Tim Burton’s new Wonderland movie. Maybe she can introduce him to Spenser Susser. I know which director I’m more excited about.
Had a lot of questions about the new theme so here are a few answers.
It’s a variation on a pro theme called Sketch’d. I say variation when I actually mean ‘broken’. Straight out of the box the theme does some very nifty stuff that creates a blog somewhere between the traditional kind and more magazine-style blogs that seem to be in vogue just now. Being old fashioned and a moron I took it apart, snapped off the cool bits and kind of blu-tacked it together again.
All the bleeding and badly stitched code is down to me and not the guys who built it.
It’s the first WP theme I’ve paid money for after years of swapping out and tinkering with some very cool free ones. The inspiration came from Christian. It just never occurred to me to pay for something until he did. I’m easily lead.
I’m not sure what the blog is called anymore. It’s been Visible Monsters for the longest time (but I’ve also got that space to do something with at some point). I guess Sizemore covers it for now. I have older posts, not archived here, that date back to 2002. I’m still mulling over whether it’s worth importing all that stuff here.
The line I’m not a field agent, I read books is from one of the best movies of the 70’s: Three Days of the Condor. It’s been a tag-line here for a while, ever since Saying The Wrong Thing Since 1972 picked up a life of its own out in the real world.
The Hunter S Thompson quote is from a letter he wrote to Keith Stroup about the lawyers who got him out of some jams back in the 90’s. It’s republished in Gonzo Papers, Vol. 3: Songs of the Doomed: More Notes on the Death of the American Dream. It just jumped out at me as something important given the social media world I now find myself a part of. I’ll be writing about that gang aspect quite a bit I expect.
The line This won’t hurt is the final line of Hunter’s suicide note. It’s something I aim to do something else with too.
Categories need an overhaul as does most of the sidebar content. I’ll get to that. Also gonna have a few standalone pages built under those tabs at the top and yeah the About page is also out of date. The fact that Max Rockatansky is looking after my 404 page makes up for this.
And then there’s the bunny. Go track down Pani Poni Dash.
I still dip in to Boing Boing from time to time, but only when I get the same sharp pang I get when I realise it’s been ages since I saw my grandmother. Then I realise she died in 1999 and go back to shooting people in the face on GTA4. Likewise I look at Boing Boing and think that while the old girl isn’t quite ready for a toe tag she may be better off in a home.
But that’s fine. Cory and co are as big as you can get online - which was recently underlined with the kerfuffle over Xeni unpublishing stuff - and they obviously still fill a gap or two. Warren even went as far as saying we should leave them to do all the curating for us, like they’re WALL-E and we don’t get enough exercise and er… ok I see his point:
They have the time, they have the money, they have the setup, they have the audience and they have the momentum of nearly a decade in the job. Nobody needs another linkblog like that. There are already thousands of them. The job of curation is being taken care of. Look ahead.
I couldn’t agree more with the second part. Go read the whole post, it’s worth chewing over.
But I like keeping my hand in with the curating from time to time and to be frank since I started using g-reader the stuff that finally pops up on Boing Boing seems maddeningly dusty. For example, there was this recent find to tie in with the Bat. Great stuff… but also pointed out by The Ephemerist almost exactly a year ago.
Now it’s great that more people are finally tuned in to the more lyrical version of Back to the Future’s theme music, but because so many people still feed their own link blogs from Boing Boing, Jill with the jack hammer is actually helping to populate the blogosphere [*spit*] with cloned posts. In my mind it’d be better if Boing Boing just went away.
Then Cory and co. could concentrate on their own stuff and maybe a bunch of fresh geeks will pick up the gauntlet. Right now there’s no real point because what Warren sees as a benefit (time, experience, money) can also add up to the equivalent of picking up your first baby sword in World of Warcraft only to run straight into some level 1006 bastardfuck who whittles you down to your virtual underwear and forces you to marry a chicken.
Note. I’ve never played a MMORPG. Or even typed it before.
Plus not everyone wants to or can create original content. And the flipside of all this is that I have quite a few readers each week who are brand new to this Interweb malarky and have not yet had the pleasure of being spoon fed by the Boingers. Or anyone else. Or had a go at the handle end of the spoon for that matter.
I dunno. BB just seems a little like season seven of a five season show.
Facial tattoos aren’t that scary, even when that guy with the NHS crutch and full prison-inked spiderweb on his face asks you for a light near Waterloo.
If Kirk has a tattoo it’s probably NO FAT CHICKS placed just above his groin.
Is it just me or does Bana looks more like one of the ‘bad kids’ from Heartbreak High.
Kirk is going to date rape Uhura.
Spock isn’t getting any.
Save us Scotty, you’re our only hope…
Edit: I just checked out the full cast list. There’s a bunch of young Kirks in the mix and a fair number of ‘Vulcan bullies’. I think I may just sit this one out. So far my favourite character is Tony the bartender.
I don’t normally just repost an entire blog entry from elsewhere, but this one is special. I’ve been avoiding all the Batfreak jism sticking to the Internets this week and I’m still only luke-warm to the idea of seeing The Dark Knight at all, even this didn’t rise much of a smile. Then Sean’s post popped up in my RSS reader:
Every superhero movie ever - including Hellboy 2, Iron Man, Superman 2, and the fantastic-looking Watchmen film coming soon to a theater near you - can suck Heath Ledgers dead cock. Screw giving the man an oscar, that would be way too nice a thing to give this performance. I want parents groups speaking out against it. I want copycats.
Seriously, it’s like A Clockwork Orange, but with less rape and more rocket propelled grenades.
I’m seeing it again.
Should probably go book some IMAX tickets… They did film this scene, right?
