Wednesday, September 13

National Geographic is Video Podcasting

In case you haven't noticed National Geographic is video podcasting. Quite frankly they are some of the best quality and most interesting podcasts I've ever seen. The vision of bringing that same exotic look into world cultures is alive and better than ever. Video podcasting seems to me a natural extention of the vision of those first national geographic magazines to use pictures. It's an interesting point of perspective with 100's of thousands of videobloggers on youtube and throughout the web. To me these videos illustrate how far we have yet to go before the world truely becomes the global village so talked about in the past. THey're a far cry from teenage girls sitting in their bedrooms talking about their secrete crush or viral videos of people lipsyncing lyric to crazy pop tunes.

"Unusual Food: Fried Rat"

Watch movie (Quicktime, , )

Original post, from National Geographic Video Shorts:

The thought of eating rats would be disgusting to many people, but there are areas of the world where a grilled rat is considered a yummy treat.

To bad national geographic doesn't even have a decent web page. But you can see their posts on mefeedia, http://mefeedia.com/feeds/18639/

(Via Mefeedia)

3 comments:

Michael Meiser said...

THat's precisely what I'm suggesting. We've got a long way to go... we've barely scratched the surface.

When we stop seing these world cultures through the lens of national geo and start seeing it through these people themselves... that's a long, long way away.

Faux Press said...

AFFINITY: A new definition of 'friendship'. Your 'friends' will watch; those to whom you are moved to comment deeply, thoughtfully, will remain, finding similar values, & direction.

RESOURCES: Another glue ingredient for your audience is that of resource convergence & diversity. You got things others need. Tools & skillsets.

That diversity brings us to distributed production.

Spices. Heartier meals.

The amalgamation of audience resources.

That breeds strength as well as vulnerability as we saw with the Rocketboom breakup.

The need for mano-a-mano that Road Node 101 promotes is important, too.

Human Advertising helps, too.

Repetition.

I think both you guys extraordinary.

Do you not find me extraordinary?

:)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/fauxpress/255559638/

Michael Meiser said...

First, jan, love the thoughts.

Second, let me see if I can interpet your abstractions... thereby hopefully not only understanding them better but perhaps even offering new ideas and perspective back to you.

Affinity... in a many to many media world... people all over the world will develop not necessarily friends (though that may well be), but affinity for one another all across the globe. I use the brookers example... sorry.. but a 16 year old girl in Africa, or China or europe might find interest in a 16 year old girl in the US on youtube... and vice versa. This widespread affinity.. will creat deep widespread cultural bonds and understanding. This will slowly... so very slowly change not only our idenities... how we ourselves in the world... not only our understanding of the world... a diversity of perspective... quite well beyond the politically correct perspectives or the broadcast media age... but it will change the makeup of the world.

New affinity in the global village.

Resources... This is "social capital" theory. We all have VASTLY diferrent skills in or modern diverse and specialized culture. The proximity, connectivity, and affinity of us to one another will create a natural economy of trade and barter, much of it without the direct exchange of money to create through collaboration, and distributed production

Spices and healthier meals...

This brings to mind a saying, "friends are the spices of life".

Spices don't necissarily make for healthier meals... but they do make for much better and more passionate meals.

Vulnerability...

Collaboration brings vulnerability... but what DOESN'T?

It's just a differnet type of vulnerability, a much more granular and human scale... a MUCH PREFERED vulnerability when you consider our current vulnerabilities.

vulnerabilities... Exon / coporate crime wipes out thousand life savings, GM/Ford laying off thousands, political strife and crime, genocide, war, terrorism... life is FULL of vulnerability...

I think the Rocketboom Andrew/Amanda thing illustrates a healthy vulnerability. I would gladly accept such risks.... than say depend on any american company to invest in my pension plan... the 100's of thousands burned by under investment in pension plans alone is an amazing evil of our time.. meanwhile these companies dumping their pension obligations through (finance restructuring) dump those burdens on us the citizens of the united states... as we bail them out... and they after pocketing all those profits for years and years instead of paying into pensions.

The difference is HUMAN SCALE... in this new media world we are empowered, we have new power, more control, on a human scale.


Human advertising...

Again, this is *social capital* stuff.

We're ALWAYS self advertising by such definition... it's impossible not to. Everything we write, say, do is a testament to our uniqueness, perspectives, knowlege, character, brilliance. The videos we make.. the blog posts, the photos we share... the audio podcasts we create... they are all advertising.

So what is unique with this advertising?

What is different between our human advertising and that of coca-cola?

again. HUMAN SCALE...

What is this but conversation. What is coca-cola advertising but a conversation.

The difference is only of scale, context.

Coca-cola's conversation is abtuse... distracting, often obnoxious... like putting together a puzzle with kid gloves... they use money and media to the advantage of their one sided conversation.

Our ability to self advertise.. is being empowered, growing stronger every day. It is natural, reciprocal, conversational. We chat on mailing lists, discussion boards, photosharing sites, blogs, blog comments, anywhere there is social space. And because of it we bump into and find kinsmen (and kinswomen :) who share interests, perspectives, and offer us insights... people whom we find fascinating.