Wathching this video I was reminded that the image can quite often trump the power of the written word. Made by anthropologist Michael Wesh, I could not help but smile at his visual essay on the web, even though I am not all that rah-rah over Web 2.0 and the unbelievable proliferation of …. everything …. . But I immediately identified with most of the images and so there was something quite comforting in seeing a set of images that if nothing else, captures the everyday experiences of many folks hunched over their computers for hours everyday.
I think it would have been good, however, to include at least a small splash of the dysptopic in this representation, because even for its biggest enthusiasts, I imagine there is always a set of frustrations and downsides, like for example, taking over 3 weeks to catch up with your blogroll (and mine is pretty modest) because of this extreme explosion of well … everything… and all the organzing tools like tagging and citation software while are really “cool” in that gadget-gizmo sense are just not enough to soften the downsides of a really heavy (information-over) load.