Michael Wesch, a cultural anthropologist at Kansas State University, has produced a remarkable series of videos about the cultural and epistemological “r/evolution” that has been produced (enabled?) by the proliferation of the Internet.
The newest video, Information R/evolution, came out a couple of weeks ago and is an amazing testament to how our mental space has been transformed in less than two decades. It also provides a glimpse of how far many of us have left to go in our own personal reconceptualizations of what this epistemological (metaphysical?) transformation will and can mean.
Wesch’s first video, The Machine is Us/ing Us, is a slightly different take on a similar subject, exploring the evolution of information through the evolution of the Internet, particularly in regard to Web 2.0 technologies.
The final video, A Vision of Students Today, should be required viewing for all University faculty. It provides a powerful look at how that epistemological/metaphysical shift is experienced by today’s college students.
As an anthropologist, Wesch is primarily concerned with the cultural ramifications of this r/evolution, but his vision, as well as the phenomena on which it is based, also has tremendous implications for educators, both in terms of how we confront this new reality in our classrooms, as well as how we find new ways to envision and take advantage of these unforeseen possibilities.
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