Michael Wesch

Michael Wesch explores how digital technologies reshape human connection learning and culture. As a cultural anthropologist and award-winning professor at Kansas State University he speaks on digital media impact on education and society and preparing students for uncertain futures. Michael gained international recognition through viral videos exploring web culture and human connectivity in digital age. His work examines how social media platforms shape identity formation and community building and information consumption. He helps audiences understand both the opportunities and challenges technology creates for meaningful human interaction. His innovative teaching methods earned him recognition as Professor of the Year by the Carnegie Foundation. Michael transformed traditional lecture-based courses into collaborative learning experiences where students engage deeply with material create original content and develop skills beyond rote memorization. Organizations value Michael insights on engaging younger generations who grew up digital natives. He shows how educational institutions and workplaces must adapt to learning preferences shaped by constant connectivity and immediate information access and collaborative creation. His presentations address attention fragmentation and information overload and maintaining critical thinking in an environment of algorithmic content curation. Michael discusses the paradox of connection in an age of social media where people are more linked globally yet often feel more isolated locally. He explores questions about authenticity in curated online personas and the impact of surveillance capitalism on human behavior and whether technology brings us together or drives us apart. Educational institutions seeking to modernize pedagogy and companies trying to engage digitally-native workers and organizations examining technology societal impact find Michael anthropological perspective essential for understanding how digital revolution transforms fundamental aspects of human experience and what this means for future thriving.

After spending two years studying the implications of writing on a remote indigenous culture in the rain forest of Papua New Guinea, Wesch turned his attention to the effects of social media and digital technology on global society. His videos on culture, technology, education, and information have been viewed by millions, translated in over 15 languages, and are frequently featured at international film festivals and major academic conferences worldwide.

Wesch has won several major awards for his work, including a Wired Magazine Rave Award, and he was recently named an Emerging Explorer by National Geographic. He has also won several teaching awards, including the 2008 CASE/Carnegie US Professor of the Year for Doctoral and Research Universities.

Our Mediated Culture & What It Means for Marketers

It took tens of thousands of years for writing to emerge after humans spoke their first words. It took thousands more before the printing press and a few hundred again before the telegraph. Yet today, a new medium of communication emerges every time somebody creates a new web application. A Flickr here, a Twitter there… and a new way of relating to others emerges, and along with it new types of conversation, affiliations, and collaboration. Using examples from anthropological fieldwork in Papua New Guinea, YouTube, university classrooms, and projections into the future, professor and keynote speaker Michael Wesch offers a fascinating look at the often-unnoticed but profound ways in which media “mediate” our culture and transform the way brands and companies need to consider how they relate to their clients and consumers.

From Knowledge to Knowledge-able: Learning in New Media Environments