Saurabh Garg on The New New Thing

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Prof. Michcael Wesch, probably best known for his Youtube vids on Information R/evolution and The Machine is Us/ing Us delivered this awesome lecture/vid titled Anthropological Introduction to Youtube at Library of Congress. More details are available on his website at mediatedcultures.net.

In this lecture he talks about few very powerful ideas including

1. Impact of youtube on society and impact on the participants
2. Participant observation as a tool for anthropological research
3. Youtube vids permeating across time and space
4. Loss of context on youtube vids
5. Anonymity of watching vids on youtube
6. Talking to a camera rather than talking to a real person
7. The very first youtube vid featuring Jawed
   

He also talks about few Youtube memes like

1. Charlie bit me (first introduced to me by @Sheetal_Kini via this update)
2. Lonelygirl15
3. Numa Numa (the meme that started it all)
4. MadV - One World (surprisingly I hadnt seen this earlier)
5. Freehugs

Here are my notes from the vid. Please note that these would be incoherent and probably would not make sense to anyone but me. The text in ( ) is addition of my thoughts to what Prof. Wesch has spoken.

1. Most youtube vids are created for less than 100 people
2. Youtube is a medium for self immersion - people use youtube when they are enjoying themselves and they dont care
3. The web is no longer about information or data. (At the very core, it is about linking people. Sharing of information and collaboration happen because people collaborate.)
4. Web allows people to collaborate across space and time.
5. Web is about user generated content creation, organization (delicious), filtering (alltop) and counting (technorati).
6. Web is an integrated media scape with user at the center. Most of the youtube users are between 18 and 34.
7. Remixing is as big as content creation itself. About 15% of vids are remixed versions.
8. A lot of videos are addressed to the youtube community itself. (I lost the number when I was watching but this is very important for me at least. When am addressing something to the community, I am actually fulfilling my primal need to belong to a group and being together with someone. On the Internet I am alone and yet part of a group. Any new Internet meme has to address this.)
9. More individual we become, more we want to belong to a community.
10. All the youtube users are addressing an invisible audience.
11. You dont know when, where are they watching you. You dont know the context in which they are watching you. The context collapses.
12. When you are on youtube, and you create your videos, its like everyone is watching and yet there is no one. (You actually give permission to random strangers from across the world to watch you).
13. On the other side, when you are watching, you are anonymous when you are watching someone (compare yourself to the Big Brother from 1984. You are in control and the other person would not even know that you are watching him)
14. When you are watching, you are distant from people. And hence they are relaxed and there is no social anxiety. True emotions thus are discovered.
15. (Comfort of crowds - Everyone else is doing it and I dont mind doing it myself)
16. (Internet puts a wall between real you and physical you. Actions in real life are carried out by the physical you and you are accountable. One the other hand, behind the Internet curtain, you are not accountable for your actions and you can be yourself. You don’t mind doing things on Internet that you would not do in real life)

And these notes obviously sparked a lot of new ideas. Overall a good video and again must see (like other notes on my blog).

What do you think? Did I miss something? What are your thoughts?