As I watched my Twitter feed flutter this past weekend with amazing update after amazing update of the Personal Democracy Forum, my former adviser and mentor was there giving what apparently turned out to be a standing-ovation-worthy preso on YouTube Culture and Politics of Authenticity.  The fact that he brought the house down with his presentation doesn’t surprise me; he has a unique talent for connecting with his audience and his students.  What does surprise me, however, is how he seems to do it better and better each time.  I genuinely miss studying under him, but I’m glad I get to keep up with his work through the interwebs.  Below is a brief snippet of the end a video of his talk.  If anyone knows of a longer recording, please point the way (thanks @KevinChampion).  And also, in light of the topic, I’ve included some other insightful videos you might find interesting if you like what Wesch has to say.

UPDATE: Wesch has shared his slides here.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6eMdMZezAQ&feature=player_embedded

Thomas de Zengotita on what it means to live in a mediated world.

At the 2008 Media Ecology conference I had the chance to meet the creator of this brilliant video, Eric Goodman.  A revealing montage inspired by Neil Postman’s book Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business.  In addition to thinking of Neil Postman when I watch it, I always think of Marshall McLuhan, “Faced with information overload, we have no alternative but pattern-recognition.”

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2cxfdNhQUo

“Television is our culture’s principal mode of knowing about itself. Therefore — and this is the critical point — how television stages the world becomes the model for how the world is properly to be staged. It is not merely that on the television screen entertainment is the metaphor for all discourse. It is that off the screen the same metaphor prevails.”

“Most of our daily news is inert, consisting of information that gives us something to talk about but cannot lead to any meaningful action.”

“Television screens saturated with commercials promote the utopian and childish idea that all problems have fast, simple, and technological solutions. You must banish from your mind the naive but commonplace notion that commercials are about products. They are about products in the same sense that the story of Jonah is about the anatomy of whales. ” – Neil Postman Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business

via Michael Wech – PdF2009 – The Machine is (Changing) Us.