Oh, sorry, it appears we are, but Manhattan is now in Kansas: the center of the web 2.0 universe this week for me. Everything is upside down and inside out, like a tornado has scrambled the fixed variables of space, time, and location. The guy who is making the most sense of the dramatic shifts taking place among the youth culture, the nextgen web, and the user-generated digitization of the planet is Mike Wesch, who is heading up the Digital Ethnography program at Kansas State University. We were introduced to Dr. Wesch’s work earlier this year on YouTube with his “The Machine is Us/ing Us” video of web 2.0.

What I love about Wesch is he’s an Anthropologist (I really want to say, For God’s Sakes!). He’s not a code junkie, a VC, a journalist/analyst, A-list blogger, or a consultant. He’s not even remotely associated with the tech market. His bio says that while most of web 1.0 was rising and falling, he was in Papua New Guinea doing anthropological research on “social and cultural change in Melanesia, focusing on the introduction of print and print-based practices like mapping and census-taking.”

This week’s contribution features two videos. The first explores the changing shape of information creation, retrieval, and filtering and the second explores what’s on the minds of 200 students as they face their future.

Yes.  Everything is Messilaneous.  Incidentally, the above video is based somewhat loosely on David Weinberger’s book, “Everything is Miscellaneous.” I highly, highly recommend it.  I sometimes have trouble explaining this book to my colleagues, but it is an essential read for your 2.0 library.  Also, I would highly recommend following Dave on Twitter.  I don’t follow a lot of folks on Twitter I don’t know, but I do follow Weinberger.  In addition to being brilliant, he’s hilarious.

Thanks to Zoli and Thomas Otter to tipping me off to this.

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