The video service YouTube is now 10 years-old. What a difference a decade makes. Nowadays, it’s hard to imagine life without an invisible repository for videos — large and small, relevant and irrelevant — in a single space with unlimited storage capacity, accessible in real time by anyone in the world.
To view the Armenian diaspora mark the 100th anniversary of the Armenian genocide.
To see Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, on the 40th anniversary of the fall of Saigon and the rise of communist Vietnam.
To follow the racial unrest in Baltimore, a visceral and fiery reaction to police brutality on the 28th anniversary of the Rodney King beating.
To look back with former students of Kent State on the 45th anniversary of the death of four of their fellow students in the infamous tragedy.
To witness the uprisings and dissolution of the Middle East, 100 years after the Western world imposed its self-serving order on the region after World War I, creating borders and boundaries that today are covered with the blood of Sunnis, Shiites, Kurds, Christians and Jews.
To catch people at their worst, hitting women, beating children, kidnapping people, killing people, stealing from people, cheating on people, bullying people, oppressing and suppressing people.
To behold the wondrous moments in life where us monkeys and other animals create magic and miracles.
To gain insight into previously unknown black holes of our existence and imagination.
To make both Dick Tracy and the Jetsons envious of our 21st-century world.
Happy birthday, YouTube.
Randy Boyd author 