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   Clive Thompson (clive@saturation.social)'s status on Saturday, 30-Sep-2023 14:19:44 JST Clive Thompson

   • Tim Carmody

   @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

   • Embed this notice
     Erin Kissane (kissane@mas.to)'s status on Saturday, 30-Sep-2023 14:19:38 JST Erin Kissane

     in reply to

     • Tim Carmody

     @clive @tim (Also I think I’ve given myself the brain fever this week so this may be less lucid than I think it is, and I will let you get back to the argument.)

   • Embed this notice
     Erin Kissane (kissane@mas.to)'s status on Saturday, 30-Sep-2023 14:19:39 JST Erin Kissane

     in reply to

     • Tim Carmody

     @clive @tim The second problem was that instead of crushing that second group of people, whole swathes of the culture industry jumped in with them because of the vulnerabilities and opportunities produced by…software eating the world. So I get why people are mad as hell about “content,” but it’s an artifact of the real trouble, which I think comes down to “massive sociotechnical shifts suck.”

     Thomas 🔭🕹️ repeated this.
   • Embed this notice
     Erin Kissane (kissane@mas.to)'s status on Saturday, 30-Sep-2023 14:19:40 JST Erin Kissane

     in reply to

     • Tim Carmody

     @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.

   • Embed this notice
     Clive Thompson (clive@saturation.social)'s status on Saturday, 30-Sep-2023 14:19:41 JST Clive Thompson

     in reply to

     • Tim Carmody

     @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

   • Embed this notice
     Tim Carmody (tim@phire.place)'s status on Saturday, 30-Sep-2023 14:19:42 JST Tim Carmody

     in reply to

     @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.