Article on Wesch’s Digital Video
Elia Powers’ article “A lesson in viral video” (Inside Higher Ed) looks at how knowledge of Wesch’s video, “The Web is Us/ing Us,” was seen by the initial 10 colleagues to whom he sent the link to 91,000 within two days. Some of the video’s main points are:
The difference between HTML and XML, the formation of blogs and the nonlinear quality of digital text are topics addressed in Wesch’s piece. The title, “The Machine is Us/ing Us,” is a reference to a point made in the video — that we are teaching our computer new ideas every time we click on a link. As Wesch says: “The more we are aware of the machine, the better we can make it serve us.”
And as he writes in the video, “Digital text is no longer just linking information. The Web is no longer just linking information. The Web is linking people.”
Wesch said the video is meant to remind the programmers and techies that they have a “profound impact on societies” with their ability to write open source software. He said it’s also intended to remind the policy wonks and politicians who debate Internet privacy and copyrighting that “the media we are responding to is constantly changing.”
