Thursday, January 17, 2008

Mike Wesch's Videos on the Contemporary Media Environment

As an experiment in interactive media, here at Fordham University, using the specific medium of The Blog (sounds like a movie monster, doesn't it?), I think we should include, before we go any futher, the well known (to those in the know) and well done YouTube video by my Kansas State colleague and friend Mike Wesch, Web 2.0 ... The Machine is Us/ing Us:






And let's also include a couple of his more recent follow-up to that first, multiple award winning video--I like this one a great deal because it provides a point of comparison and historical context:





And this last one, featuring Mike's students, is either interesting, or depressing, depending on how you look at things:



All of these videos are what Marshall McLuhan referred to as probes. They don't prove anything, they probe the environment, in this case the new media environment known as Web 2.0 or social networking, opening up the territory for further exploration and study, and getting us to start thinking and reflecting.

So, what are your thoughts and reflections???

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

These videos capture the effects of web 2.0 and what McLuhan referred to as the global village. However, it isn't quite back to the tribal chatter, with extensions of time and space creating the instant information highway without face to face contact and lacking direct human interaction.

Brian McNamara said...

I actually wrote about "A Vision of Students Today" in my Graduate School personal statements. When I saw it in Comm. and Technology last semester it resonated with me for some reason. It's now become something I show people when they ask about the general college experience.

Also, the quote about the blackboard is fantastic.