http://www.telegraph.co.uk/connected/main.jhtml?xml=/connected/2008/03/02/dlyoutube102.xml
"Millions of people who use the popular site will be able to produce chat shows from their bedrooms, perform music or report on a breaking news story under the new plans."
Last year in a accelerated rhetoric class I took here at the University of Iowa, I wrote an essay called: YouTubians Unite! It seems only fitting I should post it now.
On the day internet conglomerate Google bought YouTube, the tube’s founders Steven Chen and Chad Hurley released a video on their site. With 1.65 billion dollars burning holes in their bank accounts, one might expect their video would be professional or at least shot with the best forms of technology. But, no their video was shot with a handheld camera, and it portrayed two giddy children of ages 27 and 29. Why not? These two men, these computer geniuses and nerds had successfully become billionaires within a year of starting an internet website; a website whose profits is based off of advertising, and whose focus was and still is unrestrained media sharing. Chen and Hurley have successfully sold out financially and yet retained the integrity of their idea and their new form of media. YouTubian media is the future and it is quickly replacing all other forms.
YouTube was founded in February 2005 by Chad Hurley and Steven Chen. The idea behind the site was similar to those that produced programs like Napster, Morpheus and BearShare. These programs allow the file sharing of music between its users. YouTube has taken that concept, turned it into a website and allowed users to not only share music, but video. Currently, the site is considered one of the fastest growing sites in the world and it ranks 10th on a list of most popular sites. On average, 100 million video clips are viewed on the site per day and 65,000 videos are added daily with almost 20 million visitors to the site per month. (wikipedia.org)
What is the appeal of YouTube? Is it the fact that it carries millions upon millions of film, television and music video clips? Is it the fact that anyone and everyone who owns a small camera or has one attached to their computer can broadcast themselves, their ideas, their abilities, their goals and their passions over the internet for others just like them to view and discuss? It is, but there is also something deeper behind all of this. YouTube is creating a representation of people wider than any other media. It is hard today to find an unbiased media or news source. From Fox News’ conservative marriage to the White House to the liberal
Like the French coffee shops creating Auteur Theory and French New Wave Film and country cottages producing stories such as Frankenstein and poems like Ulysses before it, YouTube has successfully given birth to the future. Youtubian media is the next step in wide spread information and its populous representation grows everyday. Perhaps the best part about the Youtubian ideal is that it successfully makes American Journalist Walter Lippman’s idea of informed consent possible. Lippman believed that with enough information the general public would make the right decision or at least the best informed decision. Youtubian media makes that possible. It does not creative objectivity, yet it allows people to represent themselves and thus make informed decisions, not just of those fed to them. With the YouTubian media, the user decides what to view and what to learn. Essentially, he or she is his or her own boss or producer, deciding the information they will take in instead of having it crammed down their throats by someone else. For this, let not YouTubian be confined to only a media, but also expanded to a certain type of people. They are the people who do the above mentioned. The people who gather knowledge and use informed consent to the best of their ability. They are the ones who edit Wikipedia and use “Wikiality,” the term coined by Steven Colbert, for better or worse. They are the average Joes and Janes who have the courage to put themselves out on the internet. They are those that seek to represent themselves and to be heard in a time where the average American feels less and less like they make any difference in the direction of the country.
The world is changing. Influence of the people is no longer found through government representation but rather from their own devices. People of the world thirst for unrestrained knowledge. The YouTubian media and its YouTubian followers have found their fountain of youth. It is now up to them to exploit it. People blog, download and chat. Now they tube.
My internet is dying right now, but I'll post a video later.-Lates
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