YouTube Anthropology

I enjoyed this film by Michael Wesch where he does a really good exposition of YouTube and what it's all about. I like his statement about how we're becoming increasingly individual but still desire community; how we're becoming increasingly independent but still desire relationships and how it's all becoming more commercialized but increasingly we desire authenticity. That through YouTube essentially it's all about a longing to connect but without constraint. That's a pretty scary thought!

With YouTube, email, the blogosphere, and sites like Digg and Delicious we now live in what Michael calls an "integrated mediascape." We are at the center of this mediascape. He defines media as not just the tools of communication but as tools that mediate human relationships and when media changes, human relationships change.

With the massive amounts of change in media in the 21st century we are having to rethink governance, commerce, copyright, identity, ethics, aesthetics, rhetoric, privacy, love, family and even ourselves.

Watch the film here.