Happy 50th birthday youtube!...

from yesterday's New York Times' David Hadju

It is a neat coincidence — perhaps a wrapping up of things by the fates — that YouTube had its big payday exactly half a century after it was found that a sequence of action could be documented cheaply and easily, viewed immediately, disseminated widely and replayed endlessly. But it is also a sign of something America has lost; not our innocence, but instead our sense of awe — the idea that technology should be used to challenge our creativity rather than as a crutch for quick fame or easy laughs....

With digital cameras, camera phones and the Web to disseminate everything now, moving images seem nearly as commonplace as written language. The world has become an inversion of Orwell’s long-dated vision of a future ruled by video; instead of being the objects of observation by a great totalitarian eye, we are all running about pointing digital video cameras, watching each other.

i'm not sure if i agree. i think i am constantly awed by youtube. i guess i think that sometimes an idea done simply and excuted well is all we need. maybe we don't need a bunch of lights and special effects to commicate an idea to an audience.
---but what do i know, i was up last night watching E!'s "Girls Next Door",
i kept trying to turn it off but i couldn't look away.

click here to read the entire OP ED NY TIMES article "We Are a Camera"