I Want My YouTube
Once again the Internet changes how we access information and entertainment.
First it changed the way we communicate with the introduction of e-mail, ICQ and later it’s less-worthy successor MSN which was partly the subject of my honours thesis.
Then how we access music revolutionized care of mp3s and Napster. I remember a winter day in the latter half of the 90s when a friend sent me a 25 MB wav file of a Depeche Mode song over a 33.6k modem and I prophetically said to him, “if we could only compress this file more it would change everything“.
Blogging has also changed the way we communicate and had an impact on journalism.
As I’ve mentioned recently wikipedia has changed the way we look up information, it’s made knowledge for it’s own sake interesting and easily accessible. Frankly if my fascination with this service continues I think my IQ may go up…and my friend’s patience for me go down.
Then there was heavy.com which opened my eyes to the entertainment possibilities online, before they sold out of course. The Sabotage News Network was a proto-dailyshow and d.life the inspiration for my own road trip videos. Now this journey has taken another noteworthy step forward with YouTube.
I was recently linked to a music video on YouTube and decided to do a search for Pet Shop Boys that gave 7 PAGES of results including videos I had never seen before, live performances, interviews, TV appearances, and even a couple parodies including one about the world cup.
It could very well be the video equivalent of wikipedia. I wonder if they have the Zapruder film…
