Television is a telecommunication system for broadcasting and receiving moving pictures_sound over a distance. The word means “far sight”: from Greek tele, far, and Latin vision, sight (from vidére). From the root *weid- (to know, to see), also present in the English word wit, in the Sanskrit word veda, and the Slavic word videti and in the Latin word vìsus , sanskrit *vid, which means “face”.
What I am trying to say is that television is the first (inter) face. And face the first television.

Television is also called the tube especially in UK. It’s not surprising then, BBC was the first international broadcaster to sign a major deal with the Youtube, Google-owned portal. Broadcast yourself! BBC immediatly understood that Youtube - as responsive* interface - is a perfect platform to reach out and to answer to international audience and to give easy access to new (and young) viewers around the world.
More: the videobloggin’ attitude is designed for helping recognize new style and areas for improvement. Or to (mass) customize? In the mean time European Commission is sharing “the sights and the sounds” of Europe on EUtube.

Al Jazeera is the next one on youtube. The English version is destined to be the English-language channel of reference for Middle Eastern events, by reporting from arabic world to the West. “With YouTube’s community of millions of online users this is set to dramatically increase,” said Al Jazeera English managing director Nigel Parsons. As much as it will increase the production of up-to-the-minute and up-to-date clips. A new(s) global strategy of Trailing vision?

However as is possible with YouTube, the full range of comment, rating and recommendation features will apply to TV videos, with users able to upload video responses to the TV’s and other viewers.

This idea of “responding to foreign demands” shows the fundamental irreciprocity of relationship which characterize communication structure of video response. According to the german philosopher Bernhard Waldenfels, responding results in dealing with foreigners. Responsiveness is considered to be a specific form of handling things we encounter. This handling does not implies anticipations of attitude and goes beyond any intentionality and regularity of behaviour: it is a peculiar logic of responding, which leaves “the foreign its distance”. (Waldenfels, Bernhard - Topographie des Fremden. Studien zur Phänomenologie des Fremden 1. Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp, 1997, p. 52).

For this peculiar logic of responsiveness the viewers find themselves already embedded at distance in this (foreign) world. The viewer is already the user. Further: Production is not free creation, and implies an ethical use. Otherness then receives a cultural (socio-moral-ethical) determination as “open correspondence” between foreignness and ownness. Broadcast yourself as (video) response becomes also pragmatically relevant to fade the distinction between inner and outer. Yourself is always in between. Again a (inter) face which operates symbolically, uniting a feeling with an image: the user is individual and unique. The feeling in this context “means” responsibility as Emmanuel Levinas briefly exposed in conversation with Richard Kearney
“The approach to the face is the most basic mode of responsibility. As such, the face of the other is verticality and uprightness; it spells a relation of rectitude”. You - user- shall not kill. (valbonesi@gmail.com)