Youtube, Tell Us of This Thing Called 'Internet'

YouTube is awesome. But you know that. Its the repository for the flotsam and Jetsons of popular culture, an outlet for teen ennui, some of the longest Rick-rolling practical jokes, and every so often, a showcase for genuine talent. It also contains hours of amazing found footage, a veritable smorgasbord of geeky trivia.

Once relegated to 8mm and Betamax collections of devotees, these artifacts of ancient newscasts, commercials and home movies are now available to anyone with a broadband connection, and provide an always-amusing, often startling picture of how we used to be.

In this way, YouTube, a relative fetus on the Internets 40-year plus timeline (depending on who you ask) offers a multi-tiered story of the medium that made it famous. The recent popularity of a 1981 TV news report about the Internet is just the tip of the iceberg. Here it is in all its feathered-hair glory, along with four other videos that manage to be spooky, entertaining and educational.