"The Machine is Us/ing Us" (YouTube Video)

My immediate reaction after watching this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLlGopyXT_g>) is that I feel utterly overwhelmed. It was fast-paced and packed with information, much like the internet. I’m also still pondering the title, “The Machine is Us/ing Us.” The Machine is Us. The Machine is Using Us. Which is it? I’ll have to think about that…

The video consisted of phrases being typed via various Web applications, and the main phrase that struck me was, “Who will organize all of this data?” Perhaps this caught my attention because the answer is Me and the rest of my classmates. Since so many people have access to sharing information via the Web, whether it’s a blog, tweet, image, video, etc., I’m beginning to realize that it’s our task to serve as the gatekeeper – that we need to sort through this information and share what is relevant to the masses. This task is even more daunting when you take into consideration that “there’s a blog born every half second.”

Another interesting point in the video for me was the things that we’ll need to rethink since the Web is ubiquitous. They are:

• "Copyright
• Authorship
• Identity
• Ethics
• Aesthetics
• Rhetorics
• Governance
• Privacy
• Commerce
• Love
• Family
• Ourselves"

That’s a lot to rethink! Right now, I can’t warp my brain around the enormity of the Web.