The Web got smarter 5

(Timp estimat pentru citirea acestui articol: 4 min)

Michael Wesch is showing us, in this 4-minute clip, how we teach the web to become smarter and how we have to rethink „a few things” because of Web 2.0.

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UPDATE1: A message from Mike, on the e-mail list Media Anthro

Dear colleagues,

I was totally blown away last night when my video became a major hit throughout the internet. Starting at about 6:30 it made the front page of Digg.com, a major internet news base. By this morning it had become the single most blogged about video of the past 48 hours, surpassing even those videos produced by major media outlets. See: http://technorati.com/pop/youtube/ [NB see Web 2.0 … The Machine is Us/ing Us]

This is truly an amazing example of the power of the web 2.0 technologies my video attempts to express. The best part is that it has linked me with several academics doing similar research in Cultural Studies, Media Studies, English, and several other disciplines who I would likely have never met had I not posted the video.

Best wishes to all,
Mike W.

UPDATE2: A reply to Mike’s message from Adolfo Estalella

Really interesting not only the content of the video but the opinion of his author, Michael Wesch, about his success: „it had become the single most blogged about video of the past 48 hours, surpassing even those videos produced by major media outlets”.

This is one of the most interesting things of all these social software” technologies: how social categories become quantified, and how all the quantitative mechanisms and data are used in the legitimization discourses of these technologies: „this is truly an amazing example of the power of the web 2.0 technologies my video attempts to express”.

Anyway, I really like that idea about text, hypertext… I wonder why we use the same name for so different things like written text, digital text or engraved text . Eskimos have different names for snow with different properties, isn’t it?, why do we use the same name for so different texts?

adolfo

UPDATE 3: Article in Inside Higher Ed about viral video online

The video page had been viewed 19,000 times by early Monday, 30,000 times by the afternoon and 91,000 times by early Tuesday.

“I was totally amazed,” Wesch said. “My guess is that [the subject matter of the video] is attractive to the people who can make a video become popular,” — the bloggers, techies and news junkies who habitually pass on their favorite links to others.

Wesch’s experience of quick Web exposure is hardly rare in an age of hyperlinks, blogs and constant content sharing. And it has helped illustrate the power of Web 2.0 to his class on “digital ethnography.” Students, who have been discussing what makes a video popular on sites such as YouTube, viewed the video on Thursday, before it became an Internet hit. Wesch said the class is researching the social and cultural phenomena of the Internet and how the technology has spawned new language (HTML-speak, for instance).

UPDATE 4: An interview with Mike Wesch

First I was trying to write an academic paper. But it was difficult to express this dynamic and visual medium in writing. So I started thinking about animation that I often use to support my lectures. And one morning the vision came clearly through. And the video was born. I worked 3 days almost with ought any sleep. I was recording a screen after screen, trying to put steps together. Trying to tell a story. I really wanted to show the back “stage”. From a point of view of the code. To point out the new developments.