Wednesday, August 6, 2008

Michael Wesch Explains Everything




Michael Wesch, who is the Kansas State professor of anthropology who created the well-known video, "A Vision of Students Today," gave a talk recently at the Library of Congress. It's an anthropologist's take on the phenomenon of YouTube and Web 2.0, and what it means for rethinking, as he says, our conception of copyright, authorship, identity, ethics, aesthetics, rhetoric, governance, privacy, commerce, love, family, and ourselves.

It's long (55 minutes), but excellent. Bless his heart, he has provided an index, so you can cut to the chase, but the entire thing is "the chase," so I suggest you watch the entire thing. Wesch, an academic who would have, in the old days, been happy to reach 200 people with his message, has a world-wide audience. The very idea that a professor of anthropology has become a star via self-publishing on the internet is testimony to what he and his students are studying. 

Enjoy.

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