Michael L. Wesch, an assistant professor of cultural anthropology at Kansas State University, was writing a paper about social networking and other interactive tools, which are collectively referred to as Web 2.0, when he decided to make use of the technology to spread his message. 
So he put together a short video with examples of Web 2.0 features, with a catchy soundtrack and rapid-fire editing, and uploaded it to YouTube, the popular video-sharing site.
Within just a few weeks, the video had been viewed more than two million times and had sparked commentary from around the world. In a way, the short clip proved its own argument — that Web 2.0 is linking people in new ways and changing the way ideas are exchanged.
This semester Mr. Wesch is leading a class of nine undergraduates deeper into the world of YouTube to conduct an ethnography of the online community.
Read the full Chronicle story, and watch a video report about Mr. Wesch’s work.
7 Responses to An Anthropologist Explores Video Blogging
mbelvadi - March 26, 2012 at 7:37 am
I think you missed the point of the unknown unknown. The student who writes “under ground bunker” is already 100% certain that he’s correct; that’s what makes it an unknown unknown. If you’re less than 100% certain, it has just become a known unknown, not an unknown unknown.
Face it, there just is no shortcut to actually learning the language, and as you said that means reading a lot. What should teachers tell students for the assignment due next week? Get someone who reads more than you do to proofread!
dank48 - March 26, 2012 at 8:13 am
I love the checkers’ blind spots myself. At least today it’s usually possible to “teach” the program to accept “had had” and “that that” when they occur. Early “grammar checkers” were written by folks who were apparently innocent of the pluperfect and who were apparently unaware that that was a problem at all.
Today the ignorance of programmers is somewhat more subtle.
icbomber23 - March 26, 2012 at 9:55 am
I agree. I think I read on here not long ago (maybe it was elsewhere) that one of the traits of poor writers is that they can’t recognize poor writing. While I think it was meant to apply in a more big-picture sense, there’s no reason it can’t exist on an individual word level.
Another possibility: That students just don’t care that much to check their work carefully. Cynical, I know, but some of the errors I see, I just can’t believe they’re a result of “not knowing.” I think they’re typos, easy mistakes to make—when you’re typing quickly, an errant space bar can sometimes happen—but the student just finishes, and calls it a day.
mjaneb - March 26, 2012 at 4:03 pm
If the trend of the English language over time is toward one-word compounds,I certainly hope that website becomes accepted usage soon. Use of web site (or Web site as you have it) seems unnecessarily awkward and passe.
gavin_moodie - March 26, 2012 at 8:40 pm
Rumsfeld adopted an expression that was used in the United States military at least
since 1984 (Furlong, 1984). The idea seems to have been first expressed by Henry David Thoreau (1854: chapter 1-A) who wrote paraphrasing Confucius –
‘To know that we know what we know, and that we do not know what we do not know, that is true knowledge.’
Furlong, Raymond B (1984) Clausewitz and modern war gaming: losing can be better than
winning, Air University Review, July-August,
http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airchronicles/aureview/1984/jul-aug/furlong.html
(accessed 25 September 2010).
Thoreau, Henry David (1854) Walden, http://thoreau.eserver.org/walden1a.html
(accessed 25 September 2010).
juvenal - March 27, 2012 at 5:03 am
“FOREVER”
Forever! ‘Tis a single word!
Our rude forefathers deemed it two;
Can you imagine so absurd
A view?
Forever! What abysms of woe
The word reveals, what frenzy, what
Despair! For ever (printed so)
Did not.
It looks, ah me! How trite and tame!
It fails to sadden or appal
Or solace – it is not the same
At all.
O thou to whom it first occurr’d
To solder the disjoin’d, and dower
Thy native language with a word
Of power:
We bless thee! Whether far or near
Thy dwelling, whether dark or fair
Thy kingly brow, is neither here
Nor there.
But in men’s hearts shall be thy throne,
While the great pulse of England beats:
Thou coiner of a word unknown
To Keats!
And nevermore must printer do
As men did longago; but run
“For” into “ever”, bidding two
Be one.
Forever! passion-fraught, it throws
O’er the dim page a gloom, a glamour:
It’s sweet, it’s strange; and I suppose
It’s grammar.
Forever! ‘Tis a single word!
And yet our fathers deem’d it two:
Nor am I confident they err’d;
Are you?
C. S. Calverley
kentdm - March 27, 2012 at 4:31 pm
And please note that err’d rhymes with word.