There are things you think, say and do. Of those you say, one tends to make them contextual. This post is looking at a question, what is internet content, referenced to context. A few years ago, I felt that perhaps this was the way forward, but I couldn't answer as precisely as I would like, what is internet content. Why, because perhaps it hadn't so precisely happened, but perhaps it now is.
I look at content, and I have seen a style emerge on it that is something different from the way content is expressed in other media platforms. I think of the way cable and tv diverged in terms of speech, maybe it is something like this. Internet speech tends to be what I see as the heart of internet expression, free, with a raw edge.
It is actually in the more raw environments that the crucible of creative expression seems to thrive. Yet, at the same time, there is something like an intelligence that structures this content and always has (from its users and its textual base). It makes for a unique kind of content, no matter what state its evolution may be.
The question is how does one monetize this kind of content. The solutions in other media may or may not be applicable, partly because one may be monetizing something in development (the content itself) and monetization tends to be for products of such development.
But obviously it is possible, but is it possible to generalize this possibility, as it were. One might hope to move away from start-up models, but that may be all there is.
I saw this kind of expression though in the 90s, on the Internet and now. And it is a creativity, with that edge to it. So perhaps we can say, that internet content is that which has always been there, but it is a matter of structures to enable it and evolve it.
By always there, perhaps one can say that it is simply a way that humans can express themselves. So structural evolution may not be so much a factor for the content itself, but nonetheless it may become a factor over time (something like, how media changed speech, art and commerce). For the internet that may be a bit like bringing words and actions together.
Structures and content are so closely aligned on the internet, that we can say perhaps that structure and content on the internet are potentially equivalent. But this might suggest that content itself can drive the development of structures, at a certain point. Is this happening already ?
The evolution of this way of speech (if not the speech itself) does seem to be partially contingent on the structures for it evolving, with the key internet element, the capacity to reach many. It does not mean one will reach many, but one may.
It is like the roll of the dice in your expressions in everyday life, that great motivation that drives people to create things, for potential rewards. As long as one still feels the dice can roll. Internet content is driven by the many, not the few, that is a big difference.
However a question could be, is that expression independent of those structures, that is, does it need a certain structure to exist properly or does it adapt to those structures. That is a very crucial question, being explored right now, in effect.
My feeling would be that structures need to adapt to it, but without knowing what they can do to evolve it. That is the great roll of the dice in and of itself, and the question that lies at the heart of picking companies at a very early stage.
So can we see the Internet as a kind of distributed creative platform, which may or may not stay this way. This touches on that interesting issue of crucibles which work for a time. Like various industrial revolutions. They seem in the past to have been location dependent. And it seems extremely difficult to get them back.
Many things have been written about decline and fall of empires in all their senses. But is the internet a similar thing. Which touches on, can it be killed as a creative crucible. If this does happen would this reveal causes of the past deaths.
Well, maybe but one must always factor in the extent to which the internet is structured not only by the creative minds who make structure for content, but as well by the fact it is based around programming languages. It is hard to get away from that, especially if you want to control the content you create.
But does the fact that the level of abstraction that html, for example, provides away from the machine, mean that this is a softened logic, closer to that way humans work around logic (if indeed they do). That is, does this predispose the internet to the same fate of all creative crucibles, which themselves had a grounding in logic, even if the logic of manufacturing processes.
This touches on sales and how do sales work with the Internet. Obviously the desire is to bring content creation and selling of some kind closer. In these internet content posts I am looking for ways to cohere activity in the Internet with the way the Internet functions, based on its structure, expressed as behavior.
This behavior can be modified, but any modification makes more logical sense, if it coheres with this activity and structure (with the question being how are these equivalent). This may enable a longevity of the crucible.
Crucibles tend not to be argued with, they provide a cornucopia (bull markets being an amplified expression of this). Indeed, one can view the US as a neverending crucible, which does what has not been done in the past, when the crucible expires, it remakes it.
As I have noted in a past post, my feeling is that this comes from a number of factors, of course, but not least, that constitution itself evolved in a crucible where there was not freedom, but an extraordinary chance was given to create it, in the full knowledge of what it was not.
That is one way to describe the conditions of a crucible, indeed. But the constitution itself created a space for the crucible to live as a nation. It does seem this can be enabled time and again.
It is a sense of newness, which the US seems to find again, and again, and perhaps the Internet can as well. But is the content new. My feeling is that there is a constancy to it, but the endless newness of it, is the capacity for realizing it, as technology evolves and develops. So sales need to adapt then to that stable form of internet expression.
That is a very difficult issue, as sales are thoroughly grounded in the non internet world. My feeling on this, is to evolve a new way of selling from the realization of that freed capacity to express content. What might this be, well it is already here, in the liquid ways ads target. But perhaps we need more liquid ideas of product.
That can be contextual, the crucible that exists in hot areas like SF, but can it exist sui generis on the internet. Is the internet a crucible in and of itself. The logic in this post is that is can be and there may be a fire of creative freedom to be released.
However all of this may come from its heart, which is the US. This raises the question of the consequences of a domesticization of the internet, which is another way of looking at recent actions taken to the internet in various places.
So what is internet content. It may be a way of expression that exists but that is being enabled, but the issue is whether structures need to adapt to it or can be structured in some way and perhaps evolve a new kind of expression, perhaps from a merging of some kind. With the very interesting possibility of monetization being part of this.
