Do you know how to make cheese? Do you know how to hang dry wall? Do you know how to move a pool table? How about your favorite curry?
I didn’t but Now I do. Not only do I know how to do these things, but I know multiple ways of doing each of these things and the pro’s and con’s of each method. I’ve also been empowered to take the best of each technique and come up with my own. All thanks for YouTube.
When ever I needed to do something that I did not know, I turned to the Internet. I read tutorials about the topic in question, and in the recent past watched online video tutorials and learned everything about it. I am never happy with just reading one article or just watching one tutorial. I usually read multiple articles and watch multiple video’s on the same thing by different people. This allows me to learn from many teachers. Learn each ones techniques, and come up with my own best of all worlds way of doing it.
I was doing this without really realizing what I was doing until I came across one particular video of cheese being made in a remote location in Europe (I think) http://youtu.be/I4LNS7F_-DM. This was during my quest to learn how to make the perfect cheese. While watching the lady made cheese the way she was taught and using a method that was probably handed down from generation to generation. There may be a easier/better way to make this cheese but that knowledge is not easily accessible to her, but because I have access to a resource such as YouTube, I can learn from multiple people and find the best way to make this cheese. Thats when I realized how empowered resources like YouTube has made me. How it has changed the way we learn and how accessible it has made knowledge to us. Video is a much more effective learning medium than a plain text article (like this blog post 
)
It is the same way with skilled trades. The traditional way is to apprentice with a master of the trade. Learn his/her ways and carry out the tradition. There is “one way” that you learn to do something and you continue doing it that way even if there is a better way of doing it because that is all you know; Unless your experiment on your own. This is now changing rapidly.
I would love to hear how you have noticed you life changed by online resources of this nature.
