VIDEO DAYS begins in 1969 when video technology was still virtually unknown to the public. A portable video camera was an oddity. The only people who had them were cops, hippies, and conceptual artist Nam June Paik, who recorded the Pope's visit to New York in 1965 using one. The cops recorded the faces of hippies at events and political actions and the hippies loved to shoot videos of the cops shooting video of them. "When I would overhear the word 'video' being spoken on the street or in a restaurant somewhere," says author Nancy Cain, "I would assume people were talking about me. It was...