Great Post! Prof. Wesch makes some profound points.

I wanted to post a few links here related/referenced by Prof. Wesch:

Web2.0 Video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gmP4nk0EOE

Us by blimvisible: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_yxHKgQyGx0

His Website/Blog:
http://mediatedcultures.net/ksudigg/

Free Hugs:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vr3x_RRJdd4

My best critique in this You Tube video is Plato’s “Republic” . Plato presents the allegory of the cave.

1. Plato imagined souls chained up in a dark cave,

representing the “visible” world of bodily things, and the

“shadows” in the cave, representing what we mistakenly call “real

things.”

2. Then he imagined souls liberated from their chains (a

“conversion”) and climbing out of the cave to the world above,

where they see real things in the light of day in a kind of “Platonic

heaven” called “the intelligible world.”

3. This represents the ascent of the soul to the vision of true being,

the forms.

4. The highest form of all is the “sun” shining in that world¾too

bright to look at, at first¾which Plato called the good (and which

many Christians would later call “the Supreme Good” or God).

5. Once one has become educated to seeing in the light, it is difficult

to see in the dark. (That’s why such philosophers as Socrates seem

impractical, even comical, as if they were stumbling around in

broad daylight.)

6. But the soul that has seen should be required to go back and rule

the Republic; the man who has seen and understood the essence of

justice and virtue is the philosopher we should make king.

7. Knowledge of true being is essential to the truly good life.

May be I am a luddite, but I see You Tube as representing the shadows. We think we are seeing truth, real people, honest feelings, the essence of a political debate, no twists or turns. We are not. We are seeing images, the kiss without the feel, the chest pain without the thousand emotional reactions occurring with the fear of imminent death, the water without the salinity effecting our pores, our eyes. While it is true that people all over the world can now communicate with the click of a mouse, is having the McDonaldfication (homogenation) of the world a good thing? Parts of the phenomenon is good (feeding the many with cheap food), and parts are destructive to the species (the rising epidemic of obesity where this might be the first generation in history where progeny does not live longer than parents).

Bring on the technology to share the making of an atomic weapon, the re-activation of small pox, the elimination of the feelings of sadness or pain, the loss of any privacy, the spread of Islamic Jehad. My idols are imagination, wisdom, conversation with others, laughter.