With One Video, A New Web Guru is Born

One of the hottest viral videos right now isn't a Superbowl commercial, Saturday Night Live skit or political gaffe, but an education tool created by a Kansas State University assistant professor.

In just a week, Michael Wesch, who teaches cultural anthropology at KSU, has unwittingly become one of the foremost gurus of Web 2.0 with his video "The Machine is Us/ing Us," a whip-smart and well-crafted chronicle of the evolution of the Internet in less than five minutes.

Showing up yesterday as the #1 viral video at the Viral Video Chart, and the #5 top-rated and #3 favorited item this week on YouTube, "The Machine is Us/ing Us" traces the development of technology from handwriting to digital text to hypertext to HTML to XML to the freeing up of code that currently allows for just about anyone to write, create, post, and share whatever they desire on the web.

"I made it all by myself in the basement of our little farmhouse in Kansas," Wesch tells The Daily Reel, "which makes this all the more amazing to me."

Since the video went up last Wednesday, Wesch has been bombarded with interview requests, and he says he's "had a great deal of fun participating in the massive conversation I started -- a conversation I think is enormously important," he explains.

"Some people have suggested that my ending is hyperbolic," he says. "I don't think it is." The climax of the video implies that Web 2.0 is changing much about our lives, from copyright to authorship, identity to ethics, even love and family.

While not intentionally made to boost the profile of the KSU Anthropology department, Wesch has also received several requests from people wanting to join his Digital Ethnography program. "Unfortunately most of them were looking for a graduate level program and we are just now starting out with an undergraduate class," he says.

But the success of the video might change that. "We may need to start thinking about expanding the program," he adds. "And as it just went to the front page of YouTube, this may just be the beginning."

Wesch is continuing the discussion at the Digital Ethnography blog.