trees are people too

While researching the musings of the versatile Tom Sherman in our wiki, I got to thinking about the phenomena of online video. Tom is a video artist, but one of his interests is the shift of communication into the digital and online environment, the increasing access to immediate information, and how this is changing our society.

Upon reflection, I had to revise my initial flippant-ness regarding online video (it does feel as if youtube has been around for forever) and look a little closer at how online video is changing viewer habits. Reviewing some statistics (yes, unfortunately a big fan of statistics), I realised I was probably part of the 19% of internet users who watches online video every day.

As a media and a method of communication, video is redefining itself extremely successfully (probably the most successfully of any medium) to integrate into the online environment by becoming shorter, disseminating faster and catering for niche markets – you can find a video of almost anything you fancy.

It’s democracy of the media – it’s free, fast, fun and other f words, and is ultimately disposable, which is an attractive attribute in an environment where information overload seems imminent. Anyone with a computer can create and share it. Anyone can have their 15 megabytes of fame, and the media industry is realising this and adjusting accordingly. Watch it, chuck it. It’s a completely different method of digesting media. And online video grows organically. People want to share it. Viral video spreads without discrimination, without powers pushing it in their direction, to their agenda. We no longer have to watch what the broadcasters tell us to.

Of course, information, entertainment and news has travelled this way for years – by word of mouth, news outlets, traditional broadcast, but never so fast, or with so many choices, allowing me to completely customise it to my needs (when, where, how and how long I watch it) and in a format that defies boundaries such as literacy (other than computer literacy) and accessibility.

I probably indulge in it at least 3 times a day. Waste of time, or simply adapting to the communication tool of the future? Why read it when I can be shown it? And more importantly, what happens when youtube gets boring? What do we do then?