IMAGES: VLOGGER, TOP ROW: ITSJERRYTIME.COM; JOSHLEO.COM (2); MIDDLE ROW: SCHLOMO RABINOWITZ (2); JARED KLETT/BLIP.TV; BOTTOM ROW: IEEE SPECTRUM; CLARK OV SATURN/ZIPZAPZOP.COM; BRE PETTIS/IMAKETHINGS.COM

When I was a teenager, my friend Mike became a video star for entirely the wrong reason. It happened one day after we shot a home-brewed tape. We shot a lot of tape back then. It was a great time killer. Give us a camera and a tank of gas and the day was ours. We filmed a toothless guy making clocks out of shellacked woodcuts at the flea market. We videoed tourists and shrimp boats. When my friend totaled his car, we woke up early the next morning and went to the junkyard to shoot that too.

On this particular day, we didn't need to leave the house to find inspiration. Mike put on a goofy wool hat and our friend Fred hung a spinning globe from the ceiling above him. As the camera rolled, Mike made his voice sound deep and important and talked about the power of wishing. If you wish for something, you get it, he intoned.

By way of example, he said he wished he had a fish. On cue, from off-screen, Fred tossed him a wooden fish. Then Mike wished for a cat. Fred handed one over. But the cat clawed Mike's lip and, after hanging there for a split second, fell into his lap. Mike clutched his mouth as blood spurted through his fingers. Naturally, we thought this was hilarious, particularly when viewed back in slow motion, which we did a few thousand times. The "Wish I Had a Cat" video, as we soon dubbed it, became legendary in our circle. And then, like most of the videos we shot, it got lost forever—probably, some would think, as it should.

Today, of course, that idea seems completely antiquated. Our video wouldn't be gone. It would be alive in perpetuity, online in the burgeoning collective consciousness known as the vlogosphere. Vlogs are video blogs: home-brewed, home-shot, home-uploaded short flicks made by and for Generation Net. New technologies are making it free and easy to find, swap, and create video on the Web. As a result, they're putting the "me" in media like never before, and radically transforming the way we perceive the world around us.

The cat we once wished for is out of the bag. But will we want to put it back?

Video, particularly television video, despite its ubiquity, has long been a transient medium. We watch a show, and it vanishes. All the engineering brainpower in the universe has yet to deliver a videocassette recorder that can be easily programmed. TiVo and digital video recorders, now an option through many cable providers, make home taping easier but still don't scratch the itch for a video fix. Just as the boom in digital music (and piracy) proves, innovations in network technologies have given rise to a rabid need for instant gratification. We want our video, and we want it now. And, one way or another, people get it.

The first milestone in the path to transforming the Web into a platform for worldwide video comes, once again, from the underground. It started back in the late 1990s when Napster opened the floodgates for digital music distribution. Then Gnutella, an open-source file-sharing network, staked the flag for video. Suddenly, peer-to-peer technology was proving robust enough to deliver MPEGs as well as MP3s. But the files had to be relatively small.

Enter BitTorrent, today's overlooked gorilla in the vlogosphere revolution. By breaking up large files of data into easily transferable bits, BitTorrent transforms a computer into the greatest jukebox ever. With a few clicks, it's possible to suck in an entire season of "Desperate Housewives." Downloads can take all night. But queuing up a list of torrents before bedtime has become as rote as running the dishwasher; it works while you sleep and they're ready in the morning.

This, of course, makes the multibillion-dollar industries that still sell data on plastic discs very, very nervous. The Motion Picture Association of America, once sidelined by the furor over music piracy, is now taking a page from the recording industry's controversial playbook and litigating against BitTorrent traders. "There is no minimum threshold," warns Dean Garfield, the MPAA's director of legal affairs; "anyone who engages in piracy may be sued."