I just finished watching "The Machine is Us/ing Us", and it struck me as both poignant and profound. Every day on the net we all get beat over the head with terms with "Web 2.0" until they appear to lose all meaning. But at the same time, change is coming, has already come, and though it may perhaps seem anomalous and impossible to quantify--much like the net itself--this fellow Michael Wesch at Kansas State seems to have a bit of a handle on it, and is willing to share... but that isn't exactly what I want to talk about right now.
I wonder, in the process of creating that video, did Wesch achieve anything more than a simple transmission of a few ideas, more than just a primer or introduction to some new technologies and how they are reshaping language and communication?
I am inclined to think so. In fact, I am compelled to think so. That video was art. It was exceptional, expressive art, surprisingly for some of the same reasons a great piece of literature is. It informs, edifies, and has aesthetic value and merit. The composition and connection of the message to the message medium as well as the ebb and flow of its elegant pacing, in conjunction with the music selection secures my conviction that his work deserves something more than to be categorized as merely "informational." If not art, then what?
2 comments:
I caught myself sitting back in my chair after viewing Web 2.0, saying aloud to an empty room, "Kudos to you, Wesch...". This wasn't an informative video only, it's the reason I'm stuck in my seat, hypnotized. No sir, no Pony Express here.
a key question, one we keep asking every decade, every century, every time there's something new that comes up.
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