Found things

Defining “content”

Here’s an interesting thought piece for for a Saturday afternoon: why is the term “content” so objectionable?

For Cory Doctorow at boing boing, “Content” has the stink of failure. His observation is centred on the definition of the term.

One of the origins of the term in technical speech is the idea that you can separate the “content” of a web-page from the “presentation”. Now that the Web’s in its second decade of common use, it’s pretty clear that “content” and “presentation” are never fully separable, a lesson that was already learned in other media.

In “Content-free”, Tim Bray makes the point nobody calls Hollywood’s output “content” - they’re movies and flicks. Publishers produce novels and epics; musicians make songs and symphonies.

The point here is that if you’re building something that’s used for communication, and you find that people are using an idiomatic name for what they’re sending and receiving, you’re probably on to something.

But if you’re about “generating content” you’re dead.

Reading the comments on Tim’s article backs up this position: “Content” is an enigma to the collective but to the individual, it is clearly defined.

So it is still a case that “Content is King”. But content clearly includes the “Presentation” of that “Content”.

@ColonyClive is a regular contributor to Found Things.