It's a YouTube World

A few months ago, nobody had heard of YouTube. Today, it's everywhere--and so, it seems, are its users.

At least it feels like that for me at the moment. Last week, I was on vacation in London and happened to be wandering through Leicester Square during preparations for the UK premiere of Superman Returns--which involved raising a giant sign by crane. I had my camera along, so I shot a silly little video of the process:



By the time I got around to putting the clip on YouTube, it was at least the third video of that sign going up--at least two other folks among the few dozen who watched the process also shot video and uploaded it.

Whether YouTube itself is around for the long haul remains an open question, but I can't help but think that readily-available amateur video clips of almost anything interesting that happens in the world--not to mention a lot of really boring stuff--will be part of our culture from here on out.