Besides demonstrating the amazing value of YouTube, the video above is interesting on several levels. It's nearly six minutes that retains your attention around a simple back and forth dialog with a Barak Obama supporter. As the tenor of the questions show, the guy asking them seems intent to prove something: namely that Obama's platform - and by extension his supporters - are more fluff than substance. What happens though is surprising. He ends up, like many viewers, being struck by the depth of knowledge from his target, Derrick Ashong, a 32-year old Ghanian-American musician who lives in Los Angeles. The antagonist walks away impressed.
Ashong provides answers that shows fluidity, grasp of facts, and thoughtfulness that combine to make it compelling dialogue. Let's hope this blog post can mirror Ashong's dexterity with ideas and words. What's interesting is this didactic stream of logic was watched repeatedly when posted on YouTube, most recently when I looked over 926,000 times. David Carr, whose column featured it yesterday, points up what's so interesting.
"Taken together, that means a guy who was looking" to (anonymously) show a little love for a candidate was able to look into the camera for more than 13 minutes combined and draw in more than a million clicks with an impassioned but reasoned pitch."
For anyone who has wondered whether America's love affair with celebrity and sleaze characterizes the this nation's inability to play with ideas, to find sensation in thought as well as sin, Derrick Ashong's response should put that notion to sleep. The guy is dynamic, articulate, and thoughtful without getting overly earnest. What's also interesting is that, like Obama's message, race can exist in the video without being obsessed upon. Ashong may have plenty of opinions on being black in America, but those issues can exist along with others. Instinct tells me that the reason his video has become so popular is he's given the best analysis of differences and issues facing all Americans in the election.
Besides appreciating his take, what excited me was the thinking about my partner Titus' thoughts yesterday about the recession, namely the need to look more deeply at the data. While in total agreement, what's frustrating to me is the sense that "data" today lives like the stuff in some backroom closet reserved for everything else in one's small apartment for which you have no space. Rather than it being useful and accessible, it simply exists. And worse, you're not even sure of where to put it or how to use it. Only with data these days, we're drowning in it. In fact, we're rushing headlong into new ways to gather more.
The primary reason is that digital technology is data technology. It creates new data even as it tracks existing data. Honestly, I started off writing today's post about our inability to deal with all our data. Derrick Ashong says to me that maybe it's not all so bad. More on the data piece next post.
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