Old Meets New.

I happen to love anthropology.  And technology.  And so stumbling across this was quite the fun find for me: Kansas State University has a digital ethnography project, headed by Dr. Michael Wesch, a cultural anthropologist interested in the intersection of new media and society.  Fun stuff.  

I came across it through this video, "An Anthropological Introduction to YouTube." (On YouTube, naturally.) It's long - almost an hour - but worth it.  (I've been watching it in bits and pieces all day.)  It's a presentation by Dr. Wesch at the Library of Congress in 2008.

It's fascinating to take a step back from technology for a second and think about what it all really means.  We often are so caught up in the what and how of it all that we fail to really think about one of the most interesting questions: "Why?" "What does it mean?"

It's really quite fascinating, the looks at the reflective nature of YouTube vlogs and the nature of the community and the authenticity/real/fake question and identity.

The last ten minutes (around the 46 minute mark) are incredibly powerful, the part on the den of thieves and copyright, Lessig's words on this age of prohibitions,  the human expression...