Our friends at Virtual Worlds Management have made this video available in case you missed Reuben speaking earlier this month at the Virtual Worlds Expo in Los Angeles.
This is a nearly hour long presentation to the Library of Congress by Michael Wesch who gave us The Machine is Us/ing Us last year. His talk is about his (and his students’) study of video practice on YouTube. I’ve never been a big contributer to YouTube but I have been seriously involved in videoblogging and web video for four years now. Most of that time has been spent contributing to and interacting with the community of people centered around the Videoblogging email list where we’ve seemed to have gone through an experience parallel to the one Wesch outlines in his talk.
One of the ideas Wesch brings up by way of McLuhan (at about 26:00) is that of new forms of self-awareness. I know I certainly have a much different view of myself today than I did four years ago. And now, not only how we view ourselves as individuals but also how we collectively view ourselves is becoming something that’s undergoing constant revision. What exactly this provides is hard to say because things are rushing along at such at such a rapid pace. Sometimes, like Reuben was talking about recently, it may make you feel a bit crazy but ultimately we want this because as my experience has shown me and what I think Wesch concludes is that, this will be an extraordinarily good thing.
Reuben is putting together a panel discussion - The Inevitable Future of Virtual Worlds, description: Virtual worlds and 3D interfaces are changing the flat web into an expressive experience. Copyrighted material of celebrities and real world talent are shaping the online experience through the distribution of virtual goods and likenesses. Google Lively continues to push the envelope as it introduces 3D socializing to mainstream Internet audiences. This panel will explore how virtual worlds are making the immersive web a reality for Internet consumers.
I proposed two how to demonstrations. Machinima Kung Fu - Sure machinima looks easy - record a game, drop it into iMovie and do some voices - but there’s actually a little more to it than that. This session will cover all the tech of making machinima - from hardware and software to in-game strategies to post production issues.
And Custom Video Players For Your Show - You’ve got a unique video show, why not have a player that matches? This session will take you through detailed examples using two popular Flash video players. We’ll show you how to create custom skins and get them set up on your site.
Over the last few years web apps have really transformed the way I use a computer. Every day I have less and less need for actual desktop applications. If it weren’t for all the video production I do on a daily basis I could just grab most any computer with wifi and be instantly connected to just about all of my stuff. And now that the iPhone has a mostly usable web browser, most of the time I don’t even need to take my laptop with we me anywhere. I love that.
So in the middle of watching this demo I started thinking it would be great if all the applications on your computer, not just web apps, could play together like that or maybe all your apps would be web apps (more likely) and your operating system would be the “browser.” Then you could just invoke a new view, document, video, website, virtual world or whatever and combine information in whatever way you needed to right then instead of in whatever way a particular application lets you do it. I can’t wait.
My friend Rupert pointed me to this video of Keven Kelly. It’s a really great 20 minute summary of a lot of ideas that have been floating around for awhile. The basic thing that I get from it is that we’re all becoming part of one global machine and what really makes it powerful is us being open or transparent to it.
Being open to the network is an idea that I personally find inspiring and liberating. I have a few blogs, I participate in a number of social networks and virtual worlds and I post lots of videos and photos of myself, my friends and my family online. Some people find that kind of behavior somewhat alarming - especially where my kids are concerned. But I’m looking at it from a little farther down the road. A cell phone used to mean you were on call 24/7 but now it means you have access to everyone and everything 24/7 and that’s powerful. I think for many people, putting yourself out there on the web feels like an invasion of privacy. If you were only one, I’d agree it might feel like being the only naked person in the room. But if everyone were naked, then maybe it’s not such a big deal.
I’m not saying there aren’t issues with everyone putting everything online but I’m optimistic that we’ll figure it out as we go without turning the world into some version of Gattica or 1984. Either that or the cyborgs will be showing up soon and they’ll start making their way through the list of TED speakers.
