Saturday, March 31, 2007

Medieval Helpdesk

Adding another video to my blog's collection, this comedy sketch is identified as originating "from a show called Øystein & Meg (Øystein & I) produced by the Norwegian Broadcasting television channel (NRK) in 2001. The spoken language is Norwegian. It's written by Knut Nærum and performed by Øystein Bache and Rune Gokstad." (Note: This has been posted on YouTube several times in somewhat different versions. I've chosen this version because it seems to have the best quality and the most legible English subtitles.) While ostensibly taking a techie point of view and making fun of how clueless naive computer users can be, media ecologists understand that there was, in fact, a time when books were an innovation (going back to the parchment codex), and things we take for granted about them appeared to be new and strange, and mysterious. And there's no better combination than a thought-provoking piece that also is genuinely funny.

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