Sven Jacobsen

This fascinating presentation An Anthropological Introduction to YouTube was forwarded to me the other day. Anthropologist Dr Michael Wesch presented at the Library of Congress on how YouTube has led to the development of new forms of self expression.

He explains how the video creators seem to be spreading happiness and how a video of his, The Machine Is Us/ing Us, got to number one on YouTube on SuperBowl Sunday despite every advertisers’ video being uploaded on that day.

“As an anthropologist I think of media differently as most people out there - I don’t see it as content, nor tools of communication - I think of media as mediating human relationships. That’s important: when media changes then human relationships changes.”

In a nutshell: white monitor space uses more energy than black monitor space, so blackle.com steps in to green the aesthetically spartan but energy-extravagant Google behemoth. A totally brilliant bit of internet MacGyvering that, if not a runaway success, will certainly go miles in raising awareness about what’s possible.

There’s no real reason it shouldn’t be a runaway success of wide and rapid adoption, but then again, there’s no real reason that people who buy an SUV should have a huge tax windfall instead of paying a tax directly (if not exponentially!) proportional to the weight of their vehicle - thankfully a loophole that appears to be on the wane.

Speaking of the Webbys, I’ll be damned if this doesn’t get nominated and hopefully win next year.

It’s always fun to have your own tastes and opinions validated by the premiere authoritative voice in that field, and so I was super excited to see that Getty Images’ own interact10ways microsite was nominated for a Webby Award this year, in the Art category no less, which, come on, is the coolest category to be in.

If you haven’t heard of the Webbys that may not sound like much (and you can breathe a sigh of relief at having safely bypassed the geek radar), but it’s true when the NY Times says it’s “the Oscars of the Internet”, still true but not original when Time Magazine says it’s “the Online Oscars” (ok, not totally fair, I don’t know who said it first), and oh so brash and daring when Vanity Fair says it’s “better than the Oscars”.  Interact10ways didn’t win, but it is nevertheless a big honor to have been nominated.