Intellectual Property Law

The Less Obvious Argument

By Siva Vaidhyanathan

What's interesting to me about this much-forwarded YouTube video, which is approaching five million views in its various incarnations, is that it isn't just an argument about global warming from a thirty-eight-year-old science teacher.

It's also an argument about participatory culture and the efficacy of online behavior. It proposes a "stunningly easy" course of action that requires little more than "a few mouse clicks" to forward the video to others. As the speaker says, "In today's information age you can change the culture; you can help change public policy." He's also setting some subtle ground rules about general netiquette that are designed to head off possible flame wars with his viewers in the future: "I'm asking you, who I've never met, but whose fate I'm still tied to, if you think I'm wrong, please tell me where . . . politely." In a sequel he argues for principles of collective intelligence and the benefits of being "critiqued by thousands of people."

I certainly agree with the speaker about the global warming argument, but I'm not sure that he's right about his other series of claims, that sending YouTube videos to people could ultimately help slow climate change.

More about the video at Virtualpolitik.

Full post as published by SIVACRACY .NET on February 14, 2008 (boomark / email).