@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

@clive if you begged me to come up with an even broader and vaguer term than content, I could not have thought up anything less specific than “culture”

Culture is everything: not just media. It’s your practices, your beliefs, your food, your language, your rituals, your ways of interacting with each other. Culture is the air we breathe, the water we swim in, the ground we stand on. It does not only do what you want that word to do.

@tim

Sure, I take your point

One could avoid saying “culture” if it seems too thusly broad

But so is calling a film, a song, a book, a tweet, or a TV show “content”

Unless we’re specifically discussing the network in which these pieces of human expression reside — ie the ground and the figure, the database and the data within, in which case “content” *can* be a useful term — “content” is maddeningly vague

@clive @tim So literally no one asked but I have strong opinions about this, which I’ll sum up as: “Content” is the correct term and in fact the *only* useful one for describing many structures of design and delivery. (I think you two agree there.)

The problem is that as software ate the world, venal people got control of the money, heard that usage, and learned that they could go a long way by treating all art, editorial, everything, as a fungible space-filler.

@kissane @clive @tim

In the magazine world, I also have noticed that the rise of "content" has correlated with a lack of differentiation between pretty different skillsets. Nowadays, I have freelance clients who expect me to be both a photographer and photo editor as well as a reporter, copy editor, and writer.

I think what I'm saying is that the fungibility went way beyond software and into the corporate side of publishing.