Comments on: Context is content

By: BuzzMachine » Blog Archive » Content is functionality, people are distribution

Wed, 30 May 2007 19:03:29 +0000

[...] notion of content as functionality — as I publish my list of what I’m listening to, the act of consumption becomes an act of creation; we all become radio stations — and people as distribution: the audience as [...]

By: Alan Kellogg

Alan Kellogg — Fri, 26 May 2006 20:59:20 +0000

Over the air lectures won’t be going away any time soon. They have their purpose, and some people like them. But, more and more they’ll become lectures and discussions. Oprah has this sort of thing already with her follow up show on the Oxygen Channel, and shows such as Battlestar Galactica have websites where viewers can discuss events. Expect this sort of thing to expand.

Idea: On some show have a scene where one of the cast goes online to chat with a friend. Said friend being a viewer who wins a contest. The chat being done in character. And so long as it’s in character, no subject is off-limits. How’s that for interactivity?

By: Alex Rowland

Alex Rowland — Fri, 26 May 2006 17:36:02 +0000

This is precisely what broadcasters have a major problem with. They are used to lectures, not conversations. But broadcast will increasingly fade to filling the role it is designed for, carrying live feeds, information that has zero (or very little) shelf life. But most content does have shelf life. If fact, most content needs shelf life to aggregate context and value.

This is also why merely shifting broadcast video onto the Internet misses the point. This content generates almost no content by being essentially rebroadcast on demand through ABCâ€™s Website. Only once that video has been picked up and sprinkled throughout the Web and given lots of context does it begin to aggregate value beyond production. Until the old guard (big media) understands and harnesses this fact, they will continue to be marginalized.

By: Kirk

Kirk — Fri, 26 May 2006 16:59:26 +0000

Metacritic and Wikipedia are two great context providers. You can learn a lot about a book or album by reading the reviews or the history of the band, two things I find myself doing before a purchase. I don’t agree that books imprison words though because many authors are creating web pages with discussion forums for the release of their books.

Just because you can’t write on a Monet it doesn’t mean you can’t have a good discussion about it. I don’t think an author can prevent discussion (imprison) about a book even if they wanted to. Of course giving words a creative commons license and putting them online would help but I don’t think they’re absolutely required for good context.

By: Alan Kellogg

Alan Kellogg — Fri, 26 May 2006 14:52:46 +0000

At the same time context depends a great deal on what the viewer; the reader, listener, or taster has experienced and knows. Without this prior knowledge the experience can be very different than what the creator intended and what others have known.

Knowing the history surrounding the work, the creator’s life before and during the act of creation, the state of the world and/or the immediate neighborhood when the item was made gives one a radically different feel for it. For example; someone who knows nothing of Europe during the 30 years war period will not get the same things out of Eric Flint 1632 as someone who has studied the times extensively. And, of course, with greater knowledge and experience you can better assess what is and is not reliable.

Who can you trust? What can you trust? What is reliable? All this is part of context. When those questions are answered the content becomes so much more useful. Without them the content might as well be scribbles.