Is there anything Kansas State professor Michael Wesch can't do?  If the name isn't familiar to you, he's the anthropologist who produced the brilliant "The Machine Is Us/ing Us" video that portrayed the impact of Web 2.0 on not only technology but culture, and did it all in five riveting minutes.

This week, Wesch posted a presentation he gave last month at the Library of Congress.  Entitled, "An Anthropological Introduction to YouTube," it uses dozens of consumer generated clips to present a compelling case for the far reaching impact of social media on world cultures and connected societies.

This video clocks in at almost an hour, so you may want to save it for your lunch hour -- or after hours, for that matter -- but I can guarantee that it will be an hour well-spent.

[Feed and email readers, please click through for the video.]

If you don't have a full hour and want to skip around to find portions that seem interesting, here is the timeline:

0:00   Introduction, YouTube???s Big Numbers

2:00  Numa Numa and the Celebration of Webcams

5:53   The Machine is Us/ing Us and the New Mediascape

12:16  Introducing our Research Team

12:56  Who is on YouTube?

13:25  What???s on Youtube? Charlie Bit My Finger, Soulja Boy, etc.

17:04  5% of vids are personal vlogs addressed to the YouTube community, Why?

17:30  YouTube in context.  The loss of community and ???networked individualism??? (Wellman)

18:41  Cultural Inversion: individualism and community

19:15  Understanding new forms of community through Participant Observation

21:18 YouTube as a medium for community

23:00 Our first vlogs

25:00 The webcam: Everybody is watching where nobody is (???context collapse???)

26:05 Re-cognition and new forms of self-awareness (McLuhan)

27:58 The Anonymity of Watching YouTube: Haters and Lovers

29:53 Aesthetic Arrest

30:25 Connection without Constraint

32:35 Free Hugs: A hero for our mediated culture

34:02 YouTube Drama: Striving for popularity

34:55 An early star: emokid21ohio

36:55 YouTube???s Anthenticity Crisis: the story of LonelyGirl15

39:50 Reflections on Authenticity

41:54 Gaming the system / Exposing the System

43:37 Seriously Playful Participatory Media Culture

47:32 Networked Production: The Collab.  MadV???s ???The Message??? and the message of YouTube

49:29 Poem: The Little Glass Dot, The Eyes of the World

51:15 Conclusion by bnessel1973

52:50 Dedication and Credits (Our Numa Numa dance)

Big thanks to my Aussie mate Gavin Heaton for pointing me to the link.  Read his post about Wesch's latest for commentary far more insightful than my own.