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Dec. 26th, 2006 01:43 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
adrian_turtleAt a party last week, someone was recommending a song or video or something like that, talking about having seen it on YouTube. What seemed remarkable, here and now, was how they gave the background context about YouTube, as if speaking to someone who had never heard of such a thing. I don't use YouTube much. I will probably never post a video clip, and I rarely follow links others point me towards. Long before I had used it at all, I was aware of it as a way for people to upload videos and share them, just like I was aware of Ebay as an auction site when I had no interest in buying or selling anything there.
I have no idea if these people at the party had never heard of YouTube, or if it just spread so fast the speaker missed the transition from "new concept that needs to be glossed every time its mentioned" to "familiar thing everyone knows about." This was a conversation I wasn't really part of, with people I don't really know. I might say something like, "I read these from the library, and they were really great. I love being so near the Arlington and Cambridge libraries, which have such good selections of sf. It makes it easier for me to try authors I've never heard of." I wouldn't say, "I read these from the library -- the library is this amazing thing near the Center, next to the Unitarian Church, you can go there and borrow all kinds of books and videos and everything," even though it's true. I don't remember when and how I learned that kind of background awareness of things like Ebay and Monster and Amazon, or (more recently) about MySpace, YouTube, de.li.ci.os.
I have no idea if these people at the party had never heard of YouTube, or if it just spread so fast the speaker missed the transition from "new concept that needs to be glossed every time its mentioned" to "familiar thing everyone knows about." This was a conversation I wasn't really part of, with people I don't really know. I might say something like, "I read these from the library, and they were really great. I love being so near the Arlington and Cambridge libraries, which have such good selections of sf. It makes it easier for me to try authors I've never heard of." I wouldn't say, "I read these from the library -- the library is this amazing thing near the Center, next to the Unitarian Church, you can go there and borrow all kinds of books and videos and everything," even though it's true. I don't remember when and how I learned that kind of background awareness of things like Ebay and Monster and Amazon, or (more recently) about MySpace, YouTube, de.li.ci.os.
