Keep high-def; give me YouTube

I remember exactly where I was the first time I heard the term “YouTube.”

Anyone out of college 10 years or more—okay, 20 years or more—learned about the now iconic video Web site from the youngest kid in the office.

One fall day in 2005 I was working at my computer and talking with a college intern when she matter-of-factly said something like, “Oh yeah, I saw that on YouTube.”

I waited for a context clue, but she uttered none. What new, annoying thing that makes me feel that much older is this, I asked?

“You know, the Web site where you broadcast yourself.”

It was one of those utterly oblivious watershed moments in life—the kind that will become a marker of the tiny, internal epochs of your life. In some small way, you’ll define your life as the era before and after this new thing. Like free draft beer at Maxwell’s Market, the satellite office of the Department of Motor Vehicles, or the Cadbury Creme Egg.

At a time when cable and satellite TV cram hundreds of channels of mostly forgettable programs into our homes for ever-mounting fees, we can now pull videos of our own choosing on cue, and for free (assuming you pay for your Internet).

This is not slick Hollywood content. A mixture of home movies and grainy clips snatched from TV and movies, YouTube is a world unto itself, limitless, silly and serious. An hour watching, even with stuttering video motion, can be far more fulfilling than watching the idiot box, as my family used to call TV.

I’ve seen: Cajun guys welcoming you into their world with low-brow tours of bayou country, a sunset on the beach in the Scottish village where I grew up, fearless amateur actors and comedians, pranks, and short excerpts of some of my favorite movies and TV shows.

Recently I pulled out a dusty copy of a soccer annual from the 1970s with a pictorial history of the game and players who’d returned before I took my first shot. Mostly they were English players, like Bobby Charlton and Gordon Banks and Geoff Hurst, guys who helped England win the 1966 World Cup.

Later, I searched YouTube for some memorable games, and I found countless soccer video clips—it’s the world’s game, after all.

I also found some from the 1970s, and even some from ‘60s.

And the next thing I know, those black-and-white faces from the grainy photos of my old book were alive once again, doing something none of them could have dreamed of: their match playing out on some soccer nut’s laptop computer in the next millennium, and on another continent.