Videoblogs as Collective Documentary

Jeg husker jeg hadde lest William Gibson sin bok Pattern Recognition. Den gjorde inntrykk. Samtidig begynte jeg å forstå hvordan webvideo kunne settes sammen av separate klipp, der rekkefølge og lengde kun var definert i kode. Enkelt i dag (2017), men den gang fantes det ikke tjenester som gjorde dette. Jeg forsøke å plassere skapet i det som ble min første opptreden på en internasjonal konferanse – BlogTalk 2004.

– Since we can only speculate about it’s position in a hypothetical narrative, how can we judge its relative significance?

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– That’s not my question. I’m not asking vis-à-vis segments of a narrative, but in terms of the actual sequential order of uploaded segments

Cayce isn’t used to thinking of the footage in those terms, although she recognizes them.

(William Gibson, 2003:64)

Blogging has been a textual activity, but text is only one aspects of the diverse skills which are needed in order to understand and manage different aspects of modern communication. Broadband connections are likely to stimulate a rapid increase in audio-visual services on the web, presumably changing the future conditions for blogging. Videoblogs can facilitate practices which promote media literacy and collaborative learning through the making of collective documentaries. Videoblogs with wiki-like functions promise to turn users into producing collectives rather than individual consumers of audiovisual content. This paper outline parts of the theoretical and technical framework which is needed in order to design an online environment stimulating collective production of video.