YouTube as Pynx or Jackass?

Most people love YouTube, but they don’t get it. That’s true about most new media, right? We get a kick out of playing with it when we should be studying or working. Passing around video has become so runaway popular that a whole range of businesses are trying to YouTube-ize themselves. But every time I hear about how UGC (user generated content) is the future of new media, I cringe. Come on! Did we really invent this powerful medium to watch dogs skate board and adolescent girls lip sync in their bedrooms! There has to be a wise way to harness this new medium’s potential.

I think we caught a glimpse of it last night. The YouTube/CNN Democratic debate was amazing. You can watch clips at http://www.youtube.com/debates. I can give you a lot of superlatives concerning this very creative experiment but here is the only one that matters – I watched it. Yeah, over a year away from the election and I watched it. OK, not all of it (the Tivo is still holding on to it for me later) but I sat through over an hour of it. And for once, all the headlines are right – it was the questions that made the difference. Most of the time the politicians didn’t step out of character. I guess it doesn’t matter to them if it is journalist or a real person asking the question – they assume you would rather hear the answer to a question they weren’t asked. But every now and then the puzzled look on some candidates’ faces gave me hope that they understand the game is changing.

I read classical history – it is my passion, go figure. Last night took me back to another Athens (the older one on the other side of the planet). The Pynx was a stony outcrop on a hill near Athens’ Agora. Around 500 BC the Pynx was where all Athenian citizens would come to debate and decide. Anyone could talk – democracy in its infancy and its purest form.

Did last night move us closer to that ancient ideal? Will owning a webcam instead of a news network give us a voice? I really hope that the new business model for Web 2.0 will be the Pynx rather than “Jackass” (as in the movie).

The new user generated power isn’t easy to predict and it won’t all be positive. I am trying to imagine what Socrates would YouTube. Democracy can be a tricky thing. Remember, beware of Greeks bearing gifts!