Friday, April 3, 2009

The raison d'etre behind "a virtual graduation speech to the class of 2099" about climate change and global warming


The raison d'etre behind "a virtual graduation speech to the class of 2099" about climate change and global warming:

The "speech" was shot in a studio on the campus of a local university in southern Taiwan, with junior communications department student Aremac Chuang, who hopes someday to work as a film director or producer (spell his first name backwards to see why he chose that name for his English name) on a Monday afternoon and put up on YouTube the same night. All by Mr Chuang, who volunteered to help us with the project. I had only met him one day before. We shot the video in one take, his camera, his campus studio, a kind of blue room they call it, and the 4.5 minute process took all of 5 minutes to do.

As the video now up on YouTube gets more and more hits as the days and months go on, I want to say this: [comments by "graduation speaker" Danny Bloom]

"Since the speech is for the class of 2099 at universities around the world in May and June of the year 2099 A.D.....I hope the video will stay up on YouTube and other video-sharing websites for another 90 years, perhaps even more. Of course, I won't be around much past another ten years or so to see the new comments that come in or to see how many hits the speech gets on YouTube, but I am hoping for 10,000 in the next 12 months and maybe 25,000 hits by 2012."

"I hope that each year that passes, more and more viewers will see it and try to interpret it, each in their own way, from whatever point of view they bring to the viewing process, and my guess is that everyone will see and hear the speech in their own individual ways, according to their own personalities and interests, and according to the "times" they live in, and according to their awareness of the situation their world is in at that time."

"I suspect that by 2030 will take on more urgency, and even more in 2050 and 2080. By the time, humankind reaches the year 2099, the speech might be seen in a new light, either completely validated or completely invalidated."

"So I feel we have made a speech that will last a long time, more than just one year, more than just five or ten years, but for at least 100 years, and then some. And I also suspect that the speech will take on greater urgency and added meanings as time goes on. One might describe this speech as a virtual graduation speech inside a viral time capsule hosted by YouTube."

"May the blogforce be with it!"

VIEW THE VIDEO HERE:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-wnrm2jE-E

[300 hits]

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