An Anthropological Introduction to YouTube by Michael Wesch

I caught this on Webmonkey yesterday and was blown away by this video production that Michael Wesch presented to the Library of Congress on June 23, 2008. Dr. Michael Wesch is an assistant professor of cultural anthropology at Kansas State University, and is doing some very interesting work in the field of digital ethnography.

This is a truly fascinating presentation:

More information can be found at Mediated Cultures, and at Anthrovlog.

Check out this list of projects going on at MIT’s Convergence Culture Consortium.

It’s an amazing field and well worth watching what these people are doing.

2008 Metaverse Tour

This was posted to Facebook recently by John McMullen. Here’s what caught my eye: “There are more than 300 million registered participants in non-game Social Virtual Worlds.”  The quote comes from K Zero – a virtual worlds consultancy.

This YouTube has great video clips of a number of virtual worlds interspersed with fantastic quotes. Take seven minutes and check it out.