Clive ThompsonSep 30, 2023

"Let's Stop Calling It 'Content''

I first starting noticing the word "content" in the late 90s

Companies looking to put writing, animation, video or art on their web sites would call it "content"

It flattened innumerable forms of culture into a sort of *goo*, extruded from a tube

25 years on, the term "content" has metastasized, eating whole the way many people talk about -- *think* about -- culture.

Let's stop now

My essay: https://clivethompson.medium.com/lets-stop-calling-it-content-8410bf5f94a9

A free link: https://clivethompson.medium.com/lets-stop-calling-it-content-8410bf5f94a9?sk=7a2668c44c31a4359876cfcd25a5f2d0

Show threadTim CarmodySep 30, 2023
@clive I totally disagree! I think we need to change the contexts where we use the word “content” and yes, specificity when possible is better. But it’s a one hundred percent useful word in the proper context (usually when contrasting with the equally capacious “form” or “design”) and often the only word that will do!
Show threadClive ThompsonSep 30, 2023

@tim

I think if we need one word, call it “culture” — that’s what it is!

Like I said at the end of the piece, though, the best thing is to be specific about the specific forms of culture we’re talking about

Show threadTim CarmodySep 30, 2023
@clive no! Content isn’t culture! Content is the stuff inside the boxes! The interplay of form and content is what all art, design, architecture, creation of any kind is all about!
Show threadClive ThompsonSep 30, 2023

@tim

Sure! But in talking about the interplay of form and content — when we’re talking about design, say — we’re interested somewhat equally in both things

The way “content” is used quite often these days is, to my mind, rather specifically to swish its value away away; to situate the value of <waves hands at human expression> mostly/purely in the networks in which the content resides

Show threadClive Thompson

@tim

One cannot use the word “culture” in *all* cases where we currently use “content”; but we can certainly use it in quite a *lot* of them

We can call the moving image the moving image; online essays, online essays; comments, comments

Sep 30, 2023 at 4:49amWeb
Show threadTim CarmodySep 30, 2023

@clive but you’re confusing a part for the whole. Most of what gets published is not essays or movies or comments, or even text, images, audio, and video. (I can imagine someone objecting “I don’t make VIDEOS, I make CINEMA.”)

It’s user manuals, recipes, bank statements, hospital bills, games and puzzles, personal messages of various kinds and genres, FAQs, pricing information, technical details, a shocking amount of metadata, and I could go on and on

Show threadTim CarmodySep 30, 2023
@clive Designers and publishers and content strategists and information architects and UX writers need a word to describe all of that stuff, and that word is CONTENT
Show threadClive ThompsonSep 30, 2023

@tim

I dunno — I can see the utility of the word in a few of those limited cases; perhaps with UX designers, though even they can be led astray by divorcing the structure of what they’re building from the *specifics* of what human expression will inhabit that structure

Content strategy strikes me as a symptom of the problem I’m describing — a corporate denuding of human expression from being human expression

But more importantly, the real problem has become that …

Show threadClive ThompsonSep 30, 2023

@tim

… the word “content” - to stand in for poems, speeches, family reunion photos, etc — has escaped the bounds of these comparatively-numerically-narrow technical fields, and become a way that the people authoring the stuff describe their own work

It is a database-eye’s view of the moving image, of a short utterance online, of a joke, etc