This Week on Digital Writing (Week 2)

I completed three readings in my Digital Writing Course this week.  “A Brief History of Content in a Digital Era” by Kate Eichorn, “Network Effects vs. Switching Costs” by Cory Doctorow, and “The Atlas of AI” by Kate Crawford each present valuable bits of information that were up for class discussion. Let’s jump in and discuss them here.

Eichorn’s work presented a critical question: “What is content?” There were many interpretations in my class discussion, but the most apt description was that “content” is like a backpack containing many different types of items. It doesn’t have a truly singular definition.  To further that, I think the constant mention of the Instagram egg is a decent way to refer to the ambiguity of “content” in our current era. I think that the most essential aspect of content that Eichorn mentions is its all-encompassing nature. If you belong to any fandom, it is impossible to miss any new release of any medium pertaining to it. My personal answer to Eichorn’s question is that content is a myriad of different things.

Doctorow’s work went over my head a little bit. The biggest thing that my classmates and I took from “Network Effects vs. Switching Costs” was that Big Tech is no one’s friend, especially FaceBook/Meta. Doctorow also wrote about the general oversaturation of content (shoutout to Kate Eichorn) in the current era. This made me reflect on content creators I watched when I was younger who have “retired” from the space because of the gaming content boom on YouTube in the 2010s. Doctorow’s final question to the reader is, “What is to be done?” Truthfully, I have no idea. Everything is digitized through international social media and clients that do not have our best interest in mind, and I’m not sure that there’s a way to combat that.

I do not recall much of our discussion about “The Atlas of AI.” The big point that was raised by my classmates was that AI has no place in artistic spaces. The scariest quote from Ms. Crawford’s work was, “In the long run, AI is the only science.” From where I stand, I don’t think AI has a place in art, but I don’t think ostracizing it from my personal life is right, either. AI is a tool just like everything else available to me. That doesn’t mean it’s the end all be all. It means it’s my battery-operated drill in my rhetorical toolbox.

This week’s readings spurred some great conversations in class. More than that, they’ve made me think harder about aspects of my life in a digital sense. Am I a content consumerist? Do I have the wool pulled over my eyes? Do I even think? Do I even “am?” My biggest revelation is that Big Tech and I can never get along. It was already a tense relationship but it might’ve been made worse. I’m looking forward to more conversations with my classmates in the future, especially about AI.