I just watched a video, suggested by Francine Hardaway, The Machine is (Changing) Us: YouTube and the Politics of Authenticity that “woke me up” to what is happening and what could happen on the internet.

A quote from Mike Wesch about the Video & the research:

Nobody there was blindly optimistic, thinking technology was going to make everything better. They were all continually trying to figure out where we are, where we might be going, and the possible downsides and dangers of new technologies so we can use the new technologies to serve human purposes.

For anyone who is really truly engaged in Social Media or is driving to create meaningful conversations online should watch this video. If you are just online to spam marketing messages, spam comments for backlinks or “game the system: i.e. Google & others” then this isn’t for you. But wait, yes it is…actually it is more for the spammers and “hit and run” marketing message droppers than anyone else.

This is the best 33 minutes I have spent online in long time.

The internet is evolving and so are we as communicators and information-a-holics. Prior to the internet we had the one-way conversation of the TV only. And the shaping it does to our minds, trends and pop culture is unrivaled until now.

I truly believe we will see the internet eclipse the TV because of the interaction, conversation and authenticity that can now flow from one to many or from many to many.

News is not just News anymore online – it becomes a conversation – albeit a vulgar and juvenile one at times but none the less a conversation that can breathe and give life to a story, event or occurrence.

The video by Mike Wesch, of The Machine is Us/ing Us Fame with over 10 million views and counting, really asks some questions that many of us are not considering but should be given that the internet is playing a HUGE role in our lives and the lives of billions around the planet.

Social Media and the internet have a place now and we have personal control of where it goes and how we choose to interact with it and others. We will always have the juvenile and immature behavior online but we also have a chance to really make decisions to be authentic and connect like we have never had a chance to before.

We can now connect without;

- feeling subconscious
- someone laughing in our faces
- telling us that our thoughts or ideas are irrelevant, or worse – stupid
- feeling the repercussions of revealing more than we would normally reveal face-to-face

This opens up huge opportunities to be authentic and supportive of each other thereby creating new conversations and communities that would have never been formed due to the potential for the lack of authenticity from a one-way conversation (TV), a face-to-face conversation or the distance that would normally separate us geographically.

We all now have a chance to create communities and be something more than what we may show, say or act like when at work, home, school or other face-to-face social situation.

Watch the video and then start your journey to be authentic, be real, create new conversations and create new communities. And then we can potentially create a new future of what social media can truly become.