A recent post by Peter Godwin asks “Is Youtube the Next Google?” As a librarian-teacher, and as a regular user of Youtube (content-creator not implied here) I realize that I consult Youtube videos to supplement the print texts that shape my (perceptions of) reality. I do this constantly and obsessively. Along with millions of others, I actually construct and draw knowledge from interviews, news broadcasts, and user-generated video content. Subsequently, I view it as not only legitimate, but even as essential and authoritative, if I am to construct an opinion or world-view that takes multiple perspectives into consideration.
That said, it is not a surprise that english departments, for example, are moving beyond text or print-centered academic inquiry and approaching learning and knowledge construction from myriad angles. For instance, the english department at the institution where I work has shifted from a monolithic paradigm to an interdisciplinary focus: students conduct historical research, field research, and “traditional” (i.e. print or text-based) research from multiple disciplinary perspectives. A course on representations of “madness,” for instance, must consider psychological, sociological, medical, philosophical, religious, and legal standpoints.
That shift has clearly come from a much larger socio-economic-cultural transformation promulgated by unfathomable technological advances. The student of the 21st century has to think interdisciplinarily and incorporate multi-media representations of (hyper)reality into his or her intellectual repetoire. The student of the 21st century engages his or her place in this info-saturated universe by assembling fractals of information slivers animated on LED screens into ornate and labrythine~esque mosaics. I wish I could point out some poignant Baudrillard statement that articulates the influence that these massive changes have on history, on culture, reality, and on our brains and behaviors. I wish I could remember it here, but I can’t. I’m sure there is a Youtube video that would explain it, though….Ah yes: Baudrillard’s Murder of the Real Also, here is a reading of Baudrillard‘s Seduction.
Youtube videos will be required, eventually, if not already, to appear in the works cited pages (bibliographies) of college student essays. The definition of essay will have and is already changing. Students will probably assemble narratives, projects, reports, historical essays–entirely from Youtube videos (or a comparable video-hosting site). Courses will culminate in video-ographies that will be entirely video-based. The only text present will be in video format. And they will upload their video narratives to course management sites and blogs where they’ll present their projects in video conferences. They will not post textual, web-based reflections to class blogs because they will instead upload video responses to classmates’ projects. And it’s already omnipresent on Youtube. Entire conversations are based on visual rather than textual modes of “writing.” Any faithful Youtuber, however, is not hard-pressed to find plenty of text reactions to the most banal or intellectual content on Youtube. But one Youtube search yields a noteable number of video responses. This is how people converse and have relationships. Maybe an obviously understated question is how the role of the librarian will shift as the education panacea (in this case) shifts along the information highway of insanity.
And now my incoherent ranting comes to an end….
