An Anthropological Introduction to YouTube by Michael Wesch

Continuing further with the frenzy of shorter blog posts as well as injecting some rich media into this blog, I thought I would go ahead today and share one of the most impressive and inspirational videos I have bumped into for a long while! And I mean, in a long while! It is coming from a wonderful presentation that Michael Wesch did just recently at the Library of Congress and which has been shared across as well in YouTube.

I am sure that all of those folks heavily involved with Social Media / Computing would already know who Michael Wesch is (Have blogged about him and his work in the past a couple of times already!), so I probably wouldn’t need to make any kind of introduction, but for those folks out there who may not know about him, not to worry, I won’t be doing that intro either! 😉

I will just ask you, all of you, eventually, to have a look into the presentation he did recently around the following topic: "An anthropological introduction to YouTube". The blog post providing an outline of what you would be able to find there can be found over at  “An anthropological introduction to YouTube” video of Library of Congress presentation and I can tell you, whether you love or hate YouTube, whether you would see its value or not, whether you would consider it a powerful platform to engage through video-sharing & video-blogging, amongst many many other things, or not, this is one of those presentations that will surely change your opinion, and inner thoughts, about YouTube and how it has changed our society and the culture of the entire human race!

It’s happened to me. Every time that I now go to YouTube, I don’t look into it with the same eyes or rules of engagement (Stay tuned for some more on that one!) as I used to. It has surely opened up my views on the kind of impact it is having within our society (And that would extend, obviously, to the role of ALL Social Media / Computing for that matter!) and if there would be a couple of words that I could use to describe his presentation they would be these two: a must watch!!! (Yes, I know that’s three words! But you know what I mean, right?)

Thus without much further ado, here is the direct link to the video, as well as the embedded version below, and after you have watched it, I challenge you all to confirm whether you have been moved by it or not. I am sure that you would, and very much so! (Specially towards the end of it!). And if not, nothing else would probably do within the social media space. I can tell you that, too! (That’s how incredibly moving, educational & enlightening it is!)

(Oh, and watch out this space as well, because it will not be the last time that in the next few days I will be talking about Michael and the brilliant piece of work he has been doing already in helping us understand how social computing is changing not only how we work, but also how we live our lives and the impact this kind of innovation is having in us all!)

Tags: Anthropology, Michael Wesch, University of Kansas, Michael Wesch, YouTube, Technology, Web, Internet, Human Race, Humanity, Life, Inspiration, Impact, Education, Learning, Collaboration, Knowledge Sharing, KM, Knowledge Management, Social Media, Social Computing, Social Software, Web 2.0, Innovation, Communities, Library of Congress