By Rick Van Arnam
Bagram, Afghanistan
YouTube uploaded its first video on April 23, 2005 and, in what approximates a long military deployment, was sold about eighteen months later to Google for $1.65 billion. You would think such valuation resulted from explosive revenue, but it was not. In fact Google, which runs YouTube as a subsidiary, reports that “we have yet to realize significant revenue benefits from our acquisition of YouTube” (Google, Form 10-Q, 5 May 2010). To put that purchase amount in perspective, consider a couple of figures in the news recently related to the Kabul Bank in Afghanistan which may be near collapse if not insolvent. Afghanistan’s President Karzai, trying to reassure the international community, stated that the country’s foreign currency reserves stood at $4.8 billion (New York Times, September 2, 2010). And according to the CIA Factbook, government revenues for all of Afghanistan in 2009 amounted to approximately $1 billion. So why is it that YouTube, a start-up company began by three former PayPal employees, commanded such a purchase price despite an absence of profit?
The answer, in large part, is due to the insatiable human appetite to watch last minute’s action from what is a considered a replay through its maturity as a current event to something that eventually endures as history. YouTube entertains – perhaps the largest purpose of video – and its founders capitalized on the confluence of technology and this human demand. The popularity of YouTube inspires the first of my eleven character principles which I have named, The YouTube Principle, and states that, “All of your life is recordable.”
Following entertainment, education may be the second most popular purpose of video and both entertainment and education provide context for the process of character development. History will make room for both – people of character and those described simply as characters. Deciding between becoming a person of character and becoming a character is at the heart of the question that accompanies The YouTube Principle which is, “What will comprise your culminating sixty-second highlight?” Think of it as an ESPN SportsCenter exercise. If your life were to become an ESPN SportsCenter highlight, what would you want it to include? In a virtually transparent world, how you answer that question has never been more important.
Earlier this year, Faisal Shahzad drove a SUV into Times Square, parked it and walked away. The SUV contained a crude bomb that was intended to detonate causing massive casualties. Fortunately, no one was injured and the ill performing device was detected before it could cause its intended harm. Within a short period, Shahzad, a naturalized citizen born in Pakistan, was rounded up at Kennedy Airport. Among the first investigative instincts toward apprehending Shahzad was to look at surveillance footage from up to eighty cameras scanning one of the busiest areas of New York City. Not surprisingly, he was quickly found on video. But police had enough on him without the video by associating him with the vehicle’s registration which was tracked from the SUV’s vehicle identification number.
I realize that the terrorist caught on a surveillance camera in Times Square is an exception. Most all of us don’t have character traits that drive our behavior outside of the law. But it is a high profile example of how effortless is it to trace steps in a person’s life. It is not an overstatement to say that a person’s life today is almost completely traceable with every step or transaction recorded by camera, video or ATM.
Like it or not, we all may as well have a bar code scanned on our foreheads that would allow us to be tracked like a FedEx package. This fact makes the Leave No Trace program better suited for outdoor enthusiasts than a mantra for living life. Leading a life without trace is not only impractical, it would be tragic and begs for answer The YouTube Principle accompanying question, “What will comprise your culminating sixty-second highlight?” In that answer is found the real incentive associated with The YouTube Principle: knowing our lives are recordable should not be a deterent to act, but rather an incentive to act well. That incentive will fill a personal library with replays, some held privately and many more held publicly, that tell a story accurately of who a person really is. And for the same reason that instant replay has been used more and more to adjudicate sports plays, video doesn’t mislead.
Video serves two leading purposes – to entertain and to educate. Wisdom in action, my definition for character, has much to do with both entertainment and education. For example, video has much in common with a sports industry dominated by players serving dual roles as athletes-entertainers. As athletes, players take advantage of cameras that circle arenas and fields to make in-game adjustments, prepare for the next game or discover skills that need further development. As entertainers, the camera lens reveals character in celebration, in interviews and in off field decisions. There are other dual roles in the world today – citizen-soldier, student-athlete – even the line between professional and amateur is blurring writes Megan McArdle a noted writer on business and economics (theatlantic.com, June 24, 2010) suggesting one could either be a professional-amateur or an amateur-professional.
Of the eleven principles of character, I’ve placed The YouTube Principle first to call attention to the transparency of our culture – not to deter action, but to remind us that by placing acquired wisdom in action our character is shaped. After all, a life lived is both transparent and reviewable. But it is not both reviewable and re-livable.
RVA
