A video seeking to make Ugandan militant Joseph Kony a household name was viewed 70 million times in just 5 days.

This weekend I became the 55,240,519th person to view a certain YouTube video. Can you guess which one? After being posted on March 5th, a video about a murderous leader of an Ugandan guerrilla group, Joseph Kony, has gone viral. Seriously viral, as in, potentially the most viral video ever. As of this writing the video has over 74 million views.

So who is Joseph Kony? Kony is the leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army, a militant group widely accused of human rights violations including murder, sex slavery, and forcing children to kill “enemies,” which often includes their own parents. Okay, there are a lot of bad people in the world, so why do so many people care about Kony? I mean, normally when a video goes viral it’s a hilarious clip short enough for you to show your friends at the bar (the Amazing Race Watermelon video’s always worth another look). Or maybe it’s a soundbite of Christian Bale acting like a British Psycho. But this video that people just can’t get enough of is a 30 min long, politically motivated, not funny at all documentary!

Right now, the title of “most viral” currently belongs to Susan Boyle, the unassuming contestant for Britain’s Got Talent who even succeeded in shocking loudmouth Simon Cowell. According to the Visible Measures Blog, Boyle’s video has over 480 million views to date. But while Boyle’s video reached 70 million views in six days, the 30-minute Kony video topped 70 million in just five. That makes it the fastest growing social video campaign ever created.

“What about the Old Spice Guy?” you say? His Responses campaign was viewed a meager 35 million times in its first week and didn’t reach 70 million views until five months. A strong showing indeed, but the Kony video is flexing the real muscle now.

The video was produced by the non-profit group Invisible Children with the goal of making Joseph Kony a household name among the populace and eventually congressmen and senators with the power to take military action. They’re certainly on track. Not only is the video being viewed like crazy, but people are posting their own clips and commentary. In this new age of interactive media, viewers are investing their own time to record and upload their own thoughts. As I write, 278 video clips have been uploaded to the KONY 2012 YouTube video campaign. As of the 200th video, their average length was six minutes.

Source: Complex Media

KONY2012, the campaign’s official name, has the explicit goal of bringing about the capture and arrest of Joseph Kony by the end of the year. Jason Russell, Invisible Children’s co-founder and maker of the film, argues that if Kony’s not brought to justice by the year’s end, interest will wane and government leaders won’t feel compelled to take action.

Okay, so a ton of people are watching the video. What, if anything, has the video accomplished toward its goals? Here’s a picture of President Obama in May 2010 signing the LRA disarmament bill that calls for “political, economic, military and intelligence support for viable multilateral efforts” to stop the LRA.

The bill had been spearheaded by former Senator Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) and garnered the support of 267 members of Congress, making it the most supported piece of Africa legislation in history. Obama said in a statement to the group, “We have seen your reporting, your websites, your blogs, and your video postcards – you have made the plight of the children visible to us all.”

Not bad for a film major.

But not everyone is so enthusiastic about the video. Invisible Children has received all sorts of criticisms ranging from oversimplifying the issue to outright playing on people’s emotions to get their money. Last Friday the video was the subject of discussion on NPR’s Diane Rehm’s Show. Susan Glasser, Editor in Chief of Foreign Policy Magazine pointed out the fact that “Kony and his killers have been actually gone and pushed out of Uganda, which is never mentioned except in passing in the film.”

The group has issued a response to the criticisms.

Whether or not you agree with the group, the fact that a message can be captured in a desktop video and reach millions or tens of millions literally overnight goes to show that you don’t need to be elected to office to effect change – or have an audience with the President of the United States and spur military action. In the 90s, the International Campaign to Ban Landmines spread its message through a groundbreaking technology called email. Their dialup modem message brought about the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty. That same year they were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

My guess is that our continually-changing use of the Internet has something to do with why a video about an obscure Ugandan militant is more popular than the Old Spice Guy. The Old Spice Guy’s video was released in 2010 – eons ago in terms of our evolution from a TV-watching world to a YouTube/Vimeo/Hulu/On Demand-watching world. And how many views would Boyle’s video have gotten if it were released only last week? If Invisible Children had released their video just a year ago would it have gone so viral? Would they have gotten an invitation to the Oval Office? Would I be writing this article?

To their slogan at the video’s start, “Nothing Is More Powerful Than An Idea Whose Time Has Come,” I would add, “(But Make Sure You Use YouTube).”

After the campaign’s success I’m confident of one thing, that other videos are sure to follow. Videos like the one about Joseph Kony.

You know who Joseph Kony is right?

[image credits: Invisible Children, Visible Measures and Complex Media]
[video credits: Invisible Children via YouTube]
image 1 and 2: Invisible Children
image 3: Boyle graph
image 4: Obama
video: Invisible Children

The debate on whether online communication is hampering or enhancing the human mind has been ongoing during the opening of the 21st Century. Certainly one would guess that, like so many technologies before it, social media will both provide advantages and demand some sacrifices from its users. Multitasking across social networks allows those plugged in to have a rapid response to trends, and possibly find opportunities faster in the emerging market. That same multitasking can cause users to become distracted, with minds halfway in the digital realm even when trying to focus on other tasks. Wherever the balance is struck between risk and benefit for social media it seems apparent that the impact on the brain is profound, rapidly onsetting, and growing. It takes just hours of regular online activity before scientists can detect changes in the mind, and those changes are only going to increase as people spend more time on Twitter, Facebook, etc. Billions more people around the globe will gain regular internet access in upcoming decades so it’s likely that these newly perceived trends are going to become a nearly universal part about what it means to be human in the 21st Century. Perhaps that change is fitting. The human brain was so instrumental in the engineering of the internet, it only seems fair that the internet is ready to return the favor.

[Graphic created by Assisted Living Today Assisted Living Facilities]

An increasingly large portion of the world economy relies upon the internet to function. Not only are retailers selling goods to consumers directly, all levels of business depend on rapid worldwide communication. Socially and politically, the internet represents a chance for a truly open dialogue between citizens. As the rise of the blogosphere and social networking feeds indicate, the internet is also becoming a trusted source for current and reliable information. The free exchange of information is democratizing, and as such guaranteeing access to the internet is a part of protecting democracy.

Much of the technology we discuss on Singularity Hub is facilitated by the free and rapid exchange of information on the internet. Broadband connections allow robotic engineers to collaborate, they allow DIY biologists to form a community, and they may serve as the breeding ground for AIs. It’s hard to overstate how the rapid development of new technology depends on our ability to log on, chat, and learn.

While France was the first country to confirm internet access as a right, it did not specify broadband speeds, a crucial stipulation given the complexity of content on the world wide web. There are several international groups pushing for countries to recognize the importance of internet access. Among them is the APC European Civil Society Internet Rights Project which features reports on nations measuring their internet accessibility (Finland’s report is fairly praise-heavy).

Finland has a relatively long history of supporting its growing tech based economy and citizenry. It is the home of Nokia and regularly invests 3.5% of its GDP into research and development. Back in August, 1998, Finland was the first European country where more than 50% of the population had access to mobile phones. In December of that same year, mobile phones began to outnumber traditional landlines.

Fins are prodigious consumers of the internet. According to Statistics Finland (a government run bureau), 83% of people were regularly online in spring 2008 (that’s up 4% from the year before), and about two thirds of citizens were daily users. That’s a big difference from just 8 years prior when only 12.1% of the population had internet access. Obviously, Finland is taking to the internet quickly, likely due to the technology focused economy, and location of many of its inhabitants in remote areas.

That remoteness will limit the Finnish guarantee, as the government has declared that some 2000 households are too remote to be included in universal broadband access. Still, legislators have promised that besides these few exceptions, no household will be further than 2 km from a 100 Mbps internet connection by the end of 2015.

So take a moment and applaud Finland if you will. Their dedication to broadband access has set the path for other countries to follow. By guaranteeing right to the internet for its citizens, a nation is securing the future of democratized technology, and free public discourse. I hope that countries all over the world work to follow the Finnish example. In the meantime, I will leave you with the immortal words of Sir Monty Python: “Finland, Finland, Finland. Finland has it all.”

[video credits: CozaProductions]