November 7th, 2008
ok actually most nights are YouTube night in our house. I mostly blame my son, he bought himself a laptop and now seamlessly multitasks between Lost (we bought the DVD’s and are now hooked midway through season 2) and YouTube. Now the problem is every 45 seconds he interupts my attempts to make sense of the magical island with “have you seen this !!!!” And we pause the DVD whilst we attach something he has found. All of which is ok - and reflects the popular image of YouTube as home to the best trash TV in the world
But theres a whole lot more there, and the popular image of the resource is doing some harm. Im midway through the ubuntu training course I found on the site, ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ctaj8kBA1Qo ) Im Watching Eric Nindens Video Blog regularly - but he hasnt posted for a while is he OK ??? http://www.youtube.com/user/EricNinden - Ive learnt about new technologies, approaches to different needs, perspectives froma global community - it has honestly broadened my world outlook. Yet in schools and in many workplaces its blocked - we seem to be still runnng through the same arguemnets with the social networks as we did when the Internet and web first became popular - yes there is material I find abhorrent and offensive, yes I have to know how to be safe, but I want the benefits most of all.
And those benefits are potentially huge for disabled people, a group that has traditionally been denied much access to the mass media have an opportunity to have their voce heard - if you dont believe me check out Keith Wanns comedy - how technology killed deaf culture and his take on Ice Ice Baby do as much to dispel any preconceptions of deaf people you might have as anything the deaf organisations might want to say.
Oh to hell with it - thats the great thing about networks - lets share
Now its back to Lost, although its always possible to combine of our obsessions into one neat package