> artisans, even digital ones, make society better
The word "content," when applied to digital media, usually carries some implications of artlessness. Content is something that fills a container.
Music that moves you and changes you is art, and is unlikely to be automated any time soon. Music that plays in an elevator (or fills the silence in an elevator) is Content, and is highly likely to be automated soon.
A lot of 'content' to me is worse than elevator music. That at least tries to somewhat improve my experience (though you may not like it). A piece of 'content' as an intro to a recipe is there primarily to make the page longer and contain keywords for SEO purposes, but it makes my experience worse.
I don’t know about that. The way I hear it used, every YouTube video is content, even the very good stuff. HBO and Netflix are content. NBA Games are “live content”. It’s just a catch all for digital media
Well to the suits at ESPN, HBO, Netflix, and YouTube, those video files are indeed content. They are the contents of their platform.
But if you're in a conversation with an a filmmaker, a musician, a novelist, or a painter, and you try to call their artistic output "content," they might take some offense, because you're kind of reducing their work to a mere consumable product.
Yes, art can be packaged up and put on a platform and distributed and profited off of, or bought and sold on an online store like toasters and dish soap, but that's not the reason it exists - it's form of human expression.
Just as not all digital content is art (e.g. NBA games), and not all digital art is content.
> if you're in a conversation with an a filmmaker, a musician, a novelist, or a painter, and you try to call their artistic output "content," they might take some offense
This. And when I hear creative types use the word "content" to refer to their own work, I feel pity for them. And am much less inclined to check their work out, because it it seems that their mindset is to produce a product rather than art.
Especially if they refer to their audience as "consuming" their "content".
The word "content," when applied to digital media, usually carries some implications of artlessness. Content is something that fills a container.
Music that moves you and changes you is art, and is unlikely to be automated any time soon. Music that plays in an elevator (or fills the silence in an elevator) is Content, and is highly likely to be automated soon.