Soft Machine³ - Arts Tech and Other

Youtube user “mwesch” is an Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Kansas State University and represents to me the very best potential of YouTube and “citizen media.”

This is a playlist of some of his hugely successful YouTube videos.

From his page at Kansas State:

Dubbed “the explainer” by Wired magazine, Michael Wesch is a cultural anthropologist exploring the effects of new media on society and culture. After two years studying the implications of writing on a remote indigenous culture in the rain forest of Papua New Guinea, he has turned his attention to the effects of social media and digital technology on global society.  His videos on culture, technology, education, and information have been viewed by millions, translated in over 15 languages, and are frequently featured at international film festivals and major academic conferences worldwide. Wesch has won several major awards for his work, including a Wired Magazine Rave Award, the John Culkin Award for Outstanding Praxis in Media Ecology, and he was recently named an Emerging Explorer by National Geographic.

 

via Mixergy: How TWiT Is Bootstrapping A “CNN For Geeks” 

 

“With 150,000-190,000 people downloading each episode of his show “This Week in Tech”, he already has a bigger audience online then he did when he worked for Tech TV. Plus, unlike the work he does on mainstream media, Leo owns everything he puts out on his online network, TWiT.”