Vloggercon06 - Understanding Media

Vloggercon'06 is over but not forgotten. It was a great experience for networking, knowledge gathering and fun. There is such a groundswell of enthusiasm for the media by young people who might be the first generation of kids to have grown up inherently DISTRUSTING the traditional media outlets. They grew up not on Walter Cronkite, but on Comedy Central and MTV, so their bias is to treat "old media" with a healthy degree of skepticism. Even having graduated from "old media" myself, I can see their point, though the most interesting work produced is personal, funny, informative, educational. I find whatever explicit political commentary I saw as a bit heavy -handed and not as effective as the creative use of new media as an empowering individualistic tool of expression. As Marshall McLuhan said MANY YEARS AGO, "The Medium is the Message." He also coined the term, "global village." For an old media guy, he seemed to be pretty prescient! Understanding Media might be worth another look today.