Web 2.0 ... The Machine is Us/ing Us

Mike finally got me off the dime when he posted the video above. The Web 2.0 video, by Michael Wesch, Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Kansas State (now there’s a title!), was produced as a response to this video. Watch ‘em both, and tell me which one is the more instructive, not to mention entertaining and user-friendly.

A couple of asides…you may wonder why (or you may not) I hadn’t embedded video in the past. Answer: bandwidth, or lack of same. It takes me a lot of time to view any given video due to the slow speed of my connection, so I tend to pass most of ‘em by. If I do choose to watch a vid, my M.O. is to let a vid “play through” in a minimized window with the sound on mute, and then replay it once it’s been written to a temp file…and will play all the way through without buffering. That’s a right-royal pain in the nether regions and a powerful disincentive when it comes to videos. I went and refilled my coffee cup (and did a couple of other things, too) while the Web 2.0 vid was playing.

But…no more. If I find a video that I do like, and I take the time to actually watch it, I’ll share it directly.

That second aside (I said “a couple”)? After watching the Web 2.0 video I had a twinge of regret that I’m not still “in the biz.” Yeah, the hours were long. Yeah, those hours were affecting my health. But, Dang! It sure was exciting to be in the right place at the right time.