Friday, August 31, 2007

Emergence and the ABC's of YouTube

Boids is an example of emergent behavior. A large number of self-interested agents interacting produce an unexpected group behavior. I am always interested by stories with a touch of emergent behavior associated with them. Perhaps, that is why I find Web 2.0 fascinating.

Here is an interesting video that the folks from GMail put together from short clips sent in by fans around the world.



As it so happens, I have a 2 1/2 yo daughter (Little Beam). When we watch the video together I point to the GMail icon and say "M! There's the letter M!"

Now I have this idea that it would be neat to put together a list of the ABC's of YouTube. This would be a list of 26 (child friendly) videos from YouTube each featuring a particular letter in a less subtle manner than, say, the old Sesame Street segments. That is, the videos should not be titled "The Letter M".

Mmm... That's probably a collaborative project.