While on family leave, I’m looking for things to watch and listen to, since I often have my hands full and cannot read. TiVo is moderately helpful, but I’m finding I need more, so I’ve been poking around looking for interesting things online. The best I’ve come across so far is “matt7773″‘s collection of arts and culture documentaries. Over the course of yesterday I watched all 2 hours of an excellent interview with Orson Welles that tracked his career film by film. I’ve just begun watching a doc on the making of 2001, and looking over his collection you’ll see material on Philip K Dick, William S Burroughs, David Bowie, Werner Herzog, Robert Altman, Alfred Hitchcock, Peter Sellers, Woody Allen, and more, all of which is taken from British television in the mid 90s.
YouTube
There are 2 posts tagged YouTube (this is page 1 of 1).
An anthropological introduction to YouTube
Michael Wesch is one of my personal heroes. Beginning with “The Machine Is Us/Ing Us,” he’s brought a fresh, thoughtful perspective to the social media that are (re)shaping our lives. His “A Vision of Students Today” is the strongest critique of the educational system you’ll ever see in under 5 minutes.
I had the fortune of meeting Michael when he spoke at IDEA 2007. He’s a warm, smart, passionate guy, and was readily able to contribute to the discussions of information architecture and new disciplines.
Michael recently spoke at the Library of Congress, and gave an hour-long talk titled An anthropological introduction to YouTube. In doing so, he’s shaming the professional anthropology establishment, as he’s doing more to spread anthropological thought and discourse to a wide audience than entire university departments. He also shows that rigor can be fun.