Finding Content
In Kate Eichhorn’s Ebook, Content1, she discusses the difficulties that lie in trying to define the word, ‘content,’ especially in regards to digital content. What is it? What does it do? Is it simply a container? What gets lost when we start to generalize and separate content? How can we pin it down? Eichhorn delves into the history of digital content and gives some categorization for the different types: Content marketing, publishing content, educational content, and entertainment content. She discussed how content is flowing, overlapping, and circulating. I suggest that content can be defined in a very concise and accurate way.
In the world of psychology, Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) is a type of therapy used to help those who want to increase or decrease certain behaviors. To do so, the therapist or technician make out detailed plan/study where the client’s behavior(s) is defined. These definitions are called operational definitions, and they are specific for each behavior. So, hitting may be defined as: using one to five fingers to sharply make contact with something or someone. To us, that may not be what we think of hitting at all, but that is simply how it is defined for that specific behavior for that specific person. In a like manner, I suggest we define certain types of content in the same way, giving parameters and specifics. I do not think that content has to be an ambiguous, unknown entity. Yes, it is fluid, but it is also pin-downable. When discussing its uses and purposes, assigning an operational definition would help classify some of that unknown territory. In many ways I agree with Eichhorn. Content is a flowing moving entity, but we miss out on important conversations if we see it as elusive.
Switching Cost
A switching cost is some sort of privilege loss or blocked access when moving from one service to another (switching internet providers, switching from Apple to Samsung, switching streaming services, etc.). Companies want their customers to stay with them, so they make leaving difficult (files don’t transfer, movies are no longer available, certain apps can’t be run, and photos are lost). In his book The Internet Con, Cory Doctorow writes this about switching costs: “Networked tools were supposed to give us more control over our lives. Instead, we find ourselves manipulated, controlled, corralled, and milked dry. What is to be done?”2 Doctorow focuses on how people need to make the internet more accessible, so that things are not lost to time (think about a Nintendo game that works but the console is broken, or an internet platform that is shut down). Digital history is important, and the switching costs that are in place are causing whole bits of information on the internet to be lost. Doctorow asks, “What is to be done?” It is important that internet users push companies to be fair, and to make it so that nothing is lost to greed or a lack of accessibility.
Want to read the texts mentioned? Look here.
1 Eichhorn, K. (2022a). Content. The MIT Press.
2 Doctorow, C. (2023). The internet con. Findaway Voices.
Comments
One response to “Content? Defined. Switching Costs? Rejected.”
I think that the point you brought up about operational definitions makes a lot of sense when looking at from the perspective of content- the VHS example supporting your idea on defining content. I do think that goes back to Eichhorn’s questions of how do we define content. I think that her questions should be looked at in a rhetorical way where there is no clear cut answer on what content is. In her book she went through quite a few definitions. Is there really a need to define content? What you think of content as is not the same way everyone else does. This also shows through the fact you have a great way of thinking of content and defining it versus Eichhorn who takes way too long and loses my attention to figure out what she thinks.
As for what you’ve said about Doctorow, you are absolutely right, one day we are going to be paying for streaming services at the same price it would cost to get cable, but consider the other perspective. If you get cable, will you still be able to access all the ‘content’ you would find on those streaming services via cable? That is what’s keeping people from switching back to cable.