by Annette
8. March 2007
Unless you've been trekking in the Andes for the last 18 months, it's hard not to hear the hype about YouTube. And for those of us who have spent some time there you wonder why all the hype. Watching someone slip and fall off a diving board may be funny, but sifting through the trash to find the treasure, is awfully painful.
But what is absolutely thrilling and fuels the hype, is the ability to watch human self-expression in action. The raw, native ability of anyone to upload and share their own ideas captivates us. There is a sense of possibility that someone may actually create art and you may be a witness to it. It's a torrent of personal creativity in the largest gallery on the planet.
I call this phenomena the "Democratization of Genius". It means that anyone can share their best ideas with everyone. It's immediate, it's friction-free and it's widly exciting. What have you been thinking about, sketching, dreaming? Post a video. Take the best of your imagination, throw it on the web and see what sticks.
Now ideas are vetted in the marketplace of public opinion. If it's popular, its because a majority of people say it's so. No filters, no middlemen, no brokers of spin. The pure majority separates the wheat from the chaff. Whether public opinion can identify what is art is for another blog. But for now, this is one election that the populace can't wait to participate in.
