Digerati Boombati

I was just browsing The New York Times online, and I came across this article about an eighteen year old student in England who made a thirty second film serving as an ad for the new iPod Touch, put it up on YouTube, and was then contacted by Apple ad representatives who wanted to turn his ad into a slightly more professional HD production which will be aired during football games this Sunday. According to the student, named Nick Haley, Apple preserved his vision for the ad.

The article begins with the following: “The idea that you do not have to be a professional to create a good commercial is becoming widespread, in a trend known as consumer-generated content. Leave it to Apple to — paraphrasing the company’s old slogan a bit — think differently.” Apparently these goons over at the Times haven’t read Jenkins or they’d know that we’re now calling this “participatory culture” and “bottom-up consumer creation.” It’s not surprising that Apple has reps scouring the web for consumer content, knowing what we do about their primary demographics and their impressive past with the iLife awards and their software which is catalyzing the participatory culture movement, but this sort of circumstance seems like it has to start a trend among consumer electronics, especially among devices such as the iPod with such devout followings.

The most amazing thing about this story, I think, is that the student said nothing of being interested in going into advertising. He is a student of politics at Leeds. I don’t think majoring in politics will serve his cutting-edge-ness, but Nick Haley seems to already be an exemplar of a young person who is building an impressive shape-shifting portfolio without any aid from his formal education. I find this story incredibly inspiring as a future educator who hopes to be able to tap into students’ outside web-related literacy and design skills and encourage them and push them further. The world is looking like a much cooler, flatter place when not only can we as consumers create our own content and make it accessible to anyone on the web, but we can also infiltrate major media and have the potential to be commissioned and paid well for work that we created on our own terms. Very cool.