Smarter than we think

I have a few rules for this blog: no family issues, no comments on my professional work (current or past) and no politics. But I do think about media and how we use it quite a lot...it's one of the reasons I'm such an Apple enthusiast. The company is really redefining how we integrate culture and technology into our lives.
As with any change in our lives, there are benefits and things that we miss. It's easy to worry about our younger friends short-attention spans from web-surfing and text messaging friends instead of old fashioned letters. Some even predict the end of the book (I don't believe it).
The success of You Tube, the video sharing web site, has been extraordinary. While silly dogs and fictional personalities are certainly prevalent, it's also a resource for vintage music performances, craft techniques and old television programs (I'm a fan of the Rocky and Bullwinkle videos).
If there is a question about the benefit of the internet, let me point you to the news this morning that the most-viewed video on You Tube today is Barack Obama's speech on race. As of this writing over 1,200,000 people have chosen to watch it. Time magazine's television blogger, James Poniewozik, points out:
"Given that online video is an opt-in medium, that one million doesn't mean people who happened to have YouTube on in the background while they made dinner or happened to catch the video because it was on after Oprah. In other words, it was a million motivated viewers,...It was people seeking out for themselves the kind of context, complicated argument and lengthy discourse that commercial media assumes that they will go out of their way to avoid."
The beauty of sites like You Tube is that it doesn't assume anything about its audience and, occasionally, we demonstrate that we're smarter than we think.