Know it or not, we are in the middle of an historic moment in the evolution of online video. That live cam aimed at the relentless gusher of crude coming from the bottom of the gulf of Mexico is
the Web's new streaming media superstar. We are obsessed with it. The gusher has become the first major Web-to-TV crossover hit. The underwater volcano of oil is accessible from multiple points on the
Web, including remotely for several days via CNN's iPhone app. The leak-cam has become an editorial tool for TV broadcasters now. At President Obama's news conference last week, several outlets
split-screened him with the live feed.
While it may be crass to suggest that the major media outlets are directly monetizing the leak-cam, clearly they are leveraging this spectacle. PBS
announced last week that its Newshour crew had worked tirelessly to transcode the raw feed, which is not fully compatible with all browsers. Now it can be seen by all at PBS and NPR's sites and on You
Tube and Google. PBS is also advertisement
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Objectively you could argue there is no real point to our wanting to access this feed. It is not as if anything new is happening to watch. The view is fairly monotonous. We can't
exactly crowd source the solution by making it accessible to all.
But obviously this is a case where full on-demand and unmediated access to this particular event is important to us and it even
affects how we respond to the crisis. A disaster occurring a mile beneath the sea involving technologies far beyond our ken is difficult to process. This video feed has become important precisely
because it simplifies, clarifies and fully dramatizes an otherwise incomprehensible occasion. We punched a hole in the ocean floor and now the earth is leaking uncontrollably.
The view looks like
alien terrain, but the pace and relentlessness of this eco-disaster is made real. The man-madeness of it all is communicated by the punctured pipe works and the ineffectual robotic arms that come into
view. The relentlessness of the flow is feeding political frustration and could even do permanent damage to a presidency that only a year and a half ago looked so promising to so many. Suddenly this
pipe spewing poisons into the ocean has become an animated icon - a national widget -- that embodies a sense of helplessness we all share by tapping into the feed.
We are used to digital media
fragmenting audiences and moving us farther from that age of communal mass culture. In this case, online video is demonstrating its power to make everyone feel connected to the same horrible,
meaningful moment.