YouTube memo

Google acquired You Tube.

It's two active co-founders are, uh...pleased? (Nearly seven thousand comments at this writing...)
Is pleased the right word when you are told your lottery ticket just hit?

A third co-founder was written up by the NY Times.
Too modest for words.

Mr. [Jawed] Karim is the third of the three founders of the video site YouTube, which Google has agreed to buy for $1.65 billion. He was present at YouTube’s creation, contributing some crucial ideas about a Web site where users could share video. But academia had more allure than the details of turning that idea into a business.

I don't have an hour to spare watching this video, but skipping through it I think it may present a very balanced and important picture of how the next generation is using the computer and internet tools at their command. Like geriatric 1927 I am enthusiastic, pleased and generally very optimistic about the future. Check yesterday's links (Friday, October 13) at waxy.org.

My post today is inspired by this lovely ten-minute montage of YouTube snips via Motion Abbey which includes a cameo and voice-over by Peter.

Somehow all this puzzles together with two distant and seemingly unrelated other stories, the US occupation of Iraq (which by extension is a story about how the world's one remaining super-power seeks to maintain command and control -- hegemony if you will -- by military means) and the announcements this week of the 2006 Nobel Prizes. I could comment at length about how these three threads can be woven together, but I don't have time. Besides, like the endless number of YouTube contributors, what I have to say is worth nothing more than a spoonfull of sand on a very big beach.

If you do nothing else, take a moment to watch the montage linked above.