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?

Just came out of a brainstorming session with my boss. He calls these sessions as Mental Masturbation.

Someone on Urban Dictionary has defined Mental Masturbation as

The act of engaging in useless yet intellectually stimulating conversation, usually as an excuse to avoid taking constructive action in your life.

For us, its usually one short 20 minute session where we talk about things that we dont really get time to talk about. It could be things like the future of business to way people think to why people communicate to why are we what we are to anything under the sun. It generally starts as one person introducing a subject and then everyone debating on things. Awesome ideas come out of it and its as satisfying as an orgasm can be.

And it gives me immense satisfaction to be a part of mental orgy. I think if I can do this day in and day out, it will be simply awesome. And in my humble opinion most of the radical ideas that have moved the world have come as an outcome of mental masturbation. If anyone wants to engage in a mental orgy, please drop a line.

If everyone became a publisher, we would be back to the jungle where everyone wants to rule and instead of actually working on things, we will only indulge in flame wars, ego battles, mud slinging.

Every culture, society, system and civilization needs some kind of moderation. Moment this moderation is absent, everyone by their very nature wants to rule. With this urge to rule comes narcissism.

People say the future is digital and the traditional media as we know it will be dead. If that happens, I will be a scared man. A very scared man.

Next in the 1v1 series. Whether vs When.

Today I will talk about Whether and When. Most of the times when you want to take a decision, there is often a debate between whether and when. You argue on things like “Whether you will do or not”, “When will you do it” etc..

I think the use of these words greatly affects the decision.

The WHETHER questions by its very nature brings along uncertainty and with it a possibility of not doing it. You might do it. You might not. You will ask more people about it. You will seek more approval for the idea. And in the end you might or might not do it.

Moment you start asking WHEN question, the whole paradigm changes. You have already made the decision. You are going to do it. If not now, later. But you will do it. And this decision makes all the difference.

What do you think you will choose when making decisions? Whether or When?

A friend emailed me following

The problem with the progressing world and the ever-evolving generations of human is the overwhelming assortment of information, thoughts and ideas thrown around with little care leaving many dumbfounded and many others thinking and analyzing those bits that came their way. While there are some who are simply left confused because they don’t know what exactly to absorb and what to ignore and worst still how to interpret and how to infuse it with their understanding of the world and life. Left behind as a result are ambiguous thoughts and confounded souls living unfocused lives with hazy dreams. As they say “ignorance is bliss” !

An after-thought:
Meet the new generation… aware and confused. Just as we were as kids and now as youth… just as our parents were at the prime of their life… the information burden just keep on increasing with the passing decades… as the generation passes by, there is more to know and discuss with ever-increasing pressure to know…

Meet the kids of today… overwhelmed with the burden of knowledge… burden imposed by us… accepted by them… given the increased level of their curosity… given the easy access to information sources. With the progressing world, every time we pass on a larger information dump onto our future generations causing them to think and grow much faster than their predecessors.

And I wonder, if this more knowledgeable generation will be better prepared to face the world out there and lead an enriched life or will it just lead to the loss of innocence much earlier than required without helping them to grow into better humans?!!

Here is my reply.

There is only one peril. With the democratization of information and things available at finger tips, everyone is expressing themselves. Most people are not really thinking. They are just paddling what others have said. And thus the noise increase. Its the classic battle between signal and noise and currently there is a lots and lot of noise around.

And this noise adds to ignorance. People think its enlightenment but it truly is ignorance.

As far as the next generation of India goes, thing is that burden is only expected. Darwin once said and I totally agree that the fittest survive. If you are not fit enough, if you are not knowledgeable enough, if you are not intelligent enough, you would be in the lowest rung of the pecking order and that is not an interesting place to be. Once you are there, you loose everything that a human being wants from life - authority, power, food, sex, control and other things like that.

Any feedback?

Yesterday I was reading The Ambler Warning by Robert Ludlum and he talks about this interesting 1v1 dilemma. Act vs Analyze.

There are basically two kinds of people. People who analyze and people who act.

The ones who analyze things are in great demand. Most of managers, consultants, experts are generally the ones who analyze. They look at any situation with an analyzing mind, often use decision trees, rely on expertise and use tools to find solutions to the problems they are facing. Their motivation is to make a rational decision and they need an anchor to base their decision on. Ambiguity does not have any place in these decisions. They have created and live by terms like water-tight, rational decisions etc.

And then there is a second breed of people. People who act. They do. They are the ones who don’t really understand, cant really explain and don’t believe in analysis, research and other frivolities around decision-making. They claim that they just know when a thing is correct and when something is missing. They use words like gut feel, guess work, spur-of-the-moment, knew-it-all-along etc. These people are more likely to be sportsmen, entrepreneurs etc. who rather live on the edge than to wait in the conference rooms or meeting halls.

You could be someone who either acts or analyzes. There is nothing wrong on picking either. Its all about personal comfort (and breaking away from it).

Me, I have relied all my life on analysis. I think its about time I move on to action (wow a discovery… Action comes from Act).

Related list of 1v1s
- 1v1: Excellence vs Mediocrity
- 1v1: Expert vs Employee
- 1v1: Popular vs Pertinent

Third in series after Popular vs Pertinent, Expert vs Employee.

Excellence vs Mediocrity

You can either pursue excellence or remain a mediocre.

A mediocre by definition is someone engaging in an act where objective is to finish the task rather than to complete it with best of abilities. Often, shortcuts are used and outcomes are ordinary. Borrowed wisdom is put to work and original thought process takes a back seat.

Excellence is where the objective is to compete with oneself. Idea is to create something out of the world even though the objective is well defined. Excellence could be in way you work, in way you opine of things or even the way you execute. People who pursue excellence sleep easy and tight.

Mediocrity vs Excellence in one line: The pursuit of excellence creates original thoughts that a mediocre person would put to use.

Both these are more about an attitude rather than expertise or availability of resources. And once you start the pursuit of excellence, its very easy to fall in the trap and move back to mediocrity. By definition, most of the human population falls in the mediocre category and funny thing is that they dont even realize it.

You can pursue only one at a time. You could be mediocre or you could be excellent. What are you?