I've tried for a couple of days now to watch the Wesch video--the anthropological intro to YouTube. Just can't seem to get enough bandwidth to watch it straight through. But I think I've watched enough to get the drift--that YouTube has created this whole new way for people to create community, something we all yearn for, whether we know it or not. The question is, "Can we really create community with an unknown group of people, no matter how large the group may be?" Doesn't this redefine community significantly? There's no doubt that it's possible to engage in some sort of relationship with people you don't know and really don't even talk to, but that's not community. It seems a little sad to me that huge numbers of people so long for connection with others that they will make comments on just about anything--blogs of every subject, videos of the stupidest sort, photographs--when often there is no reciprocity at all. As a person of faith in which community is an integral part, I have thought about this "respond to everything online" mentality in a couple of ways. Perhaps this is not the venue for sharing those thoughts, but at the very least, I have to say that I find it hard to believe that there can be community in any real or meaningful or lasting way around a video on YouTube.
With that said, I do understand that You Tube can be fun. If a person wants to spend his free time uploading a video of himself doing something silly, or informational, or even boring, who's to say that that is not just as entertaining a hobby as stamp collecting and knitting. Moreover, just as I commented in the blog on Flickr, the sharing of all these videos provides such an incredible wealth of material that can be used in the classroom or library, that we as educators would be really foolish to ignore completely the value of this resource.
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