Digital Green

A lot of the posts have focused on American alternative media, so I thought I'd throw in an alternative use of video being used in India- Digital Green. This project aims to use video as an information sharing tool to facilitate communication on sustainable farming practices in rural India between farmers of different villages. I've begun to notice recently that in order to get Americans thinking about problems in developing countries, an American will make a documentary about a social issue and bring it back in the hopes that people here will rise out of their seats and travel the world to help solve its problems. But technology is no longer limited to the upper classes or richest countries. Instead of filming those of a different culture for a "pity" and act result, more and more groups are forming within formerly less mediated areas of the world that are "by the people" and "for the people," remaining within the country. So with Digital Green, video helps spread knowledge without farmers needing to physically move, while also creating a database of information to be used repeatedly.

I am wondering how this kind of project compares to video sharing sites like youtube or archive.org (which Aidan posted). These sites are indeed "for the people-by the people" and enable anyone to access video information, but they don't quite have a good ranking system of helpfulness or accuracy of information. Has the Internet, as a whole, become the life database of Americans? Who has the greatest agency in this search? I'd like to know what you all think of the implications of a project like Digital Green and how increased access to information can in the future result in an unnavigatable mish mosh of good and useless content.

Like, we all came up with great websites about media being used in interesting ways, but how easily are these sites stumbled upon and where does one go to find them? I guess this post has ended up questioning the Internet and its grand scope and navigational difficulty, but I wanted to bring up the increase in access to media tools in other parts of the world and where they might go in the future. For instance, what would happen if all farmers in India could search and post to youtube?

-Brittany