Philosophy 101 Unit 1

We all know YouTube is great and wonderful. My post will be focusing on an hour-long video I recently watched (on YouTube of course). It is titled “An anthropological introduction to YouTube.” I highly recommend checking it out—it will probably show you a different, interesting perspective on the site.

The creator of this video, Michael Wesch, is a professor at Kansas State University. Wesch made one video, “Web 2.0” that became extremely popular, it’s less than five minutes, and it’s fun to watch. Check it out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gmP4nk0EOE

He teaches anthropology (the study of cultures/societies/development stuff like that). He has a class that focuses specially on YouTube, and it’s community. He worked with his students to prepare this 55-minute presentation (An anthropological introduction to YouTube), which he presented at the Library of Congress on June 23^rd of 2008. 

Here is an awesome statistic about the site. In 1948 ABC became the 3^rd large network to start broadcasting. That was 60 years ago. Imagine these network have broadcasting 24/7 for every day of the year. That would be 3 (networks) x 60 (years) x 365 (days) x 24 (hours/day) = 1,576,800. This is over 1.5 million hours of programming! But… YouTube produced more than that in the past 6 months. Crazy. YouTube gets around 9232 hours uploaded per day. Most of these hours are in the form of 3-minute videos. You’re probably thinking this isn’t original work—but in reality 88% of the videos are new and original content (better than the networks do. A large percentage of the videos are meant for about a hundred or less people to view.

That whole above paragraph is basically directly taken from the first few minutes of the video that you all should check out. Wesch then goes into what kinds of videos are on youtube, like the Numa dance and other things like that. Then there are 5% of the videos that are personal vlogs addressed to the youtube community. He discusses a possible reason is the loss of community over time. Which is the way our world is headed. We now are in massive disconnected communities, suburbia. We are now much more individualistic and isolating (for example, televisions are isolating). So we find new ways, like cell phones. We now have a networked individualism (more person to person, not place to place). Then he talks about cultural inversion. The more individual we become, the more we long for community. The more independent we are, the more we want relationships, etc. This is where a youtube community comes in. To study the community the class participated in, making vlogs themselves.

After this Wesch talks about the webcam: everybody is watching where nobody is. This is basically about how you are talking to this webcam, and you have no idea who will see it. Everyone, no one, and even yourself could see it sometime in the future. This leads to a re-cognition and new form of self-awareness. This video does a great job of explaining this, so if I’m confusing you, go look at it about 25 minutes in. Generally when people are making these vlogs, there are in very self-reflexive kind of mood. There is also the idea that the watchers of these videos are anonymous. Here is a quote about the subject from some from time magazine, “Some of the comments on YouTube make you week for the future of humanity just for the spelling alone, never mind the obscenity and the naked hatred.”

With this physical distance, anonymity, and rare and ephemeral dialogue we get the freedom to experience humanity without fear or anxiety. You can stare at people, and see them for who they are, without feeling socially awkward for gazing directly at someone’s face for a long time. You don’t make someone uncomfortable by just looking at him or her.

He also discusses youtube stars, striving for views and popularity, youtube dramas (lonelygirl15—big controversy and outrage over her when people found out she wasn’t a real person, but rather a made up identity), and other awesome things.

It’s a sweet video. check it out. “An anthropological introduction to YouTube”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPAO-lZ4_hU

All credit on this post goes to Wesch and his class.

I think it would be kind of fun to share how many videos we’ve watching on youtube. Not everyone can do this, but those of us that have an account that you automatically log into, it should tell you how many videos you’ve watched on youtube. I’m a bit of an addict—I’ve watched around 3,614 videos.

A few notes:

Remember, 20 comments are due next Thursday at midnight. Get to commenting!

The Zombies vs Robots class is filling up fast, so sign up now!

If you haven’t already, be sure to order a copy of “On the Internet“, since we will be using it in just a few weeks. You can get it for $4 on Amazon, so order it soon.

I’ll try to get posts graded as soon as possible.

Next week, on Tuesday we are going to have a wrap up discussion, and talk more about how everything we have covered so far ties together. On Thursday, I will pass out the midterm, and do a review to make sure you understand exactly what I am looking for on the exam.

Below the fold, I have linked the films I showed in the screening last night, and a few extras I didn’t have time to show. If you leave a comment on these videos, I’ll likely count it for commenting credit.
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