July 10, 2008

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New Kinds of Content

For the last several months I’ve been obsessed with the idea of whole new kinds of content. We think of text, audio, and video as these sort of basic, irreducible formats — the very elements of media. But that can’t be right. We’re still just imitating old, linear forms.

That’s why I love Kevin Kelly’s concept of vizuality; it points the way towards a new video that’s somehow native to the web.

It’s still totally abstract at this point; I don’t even really know what that means.

But I do know that it bugs me when people talk about “content” as if it’s this static substance, fungible and unchanging, as Jeff Jarvis and many of his commenters do here. I left a comment of my own saying as much:

I’d argue that it’s deeply old-fashioned to think of newspapers as purveyors of blobs of text, and maybe some video to go along with it, that you can just stick into any ol’ CMS system. In fact, I’d say that if, as a news organization, your content fits into any ol’ CMS then it’s a warning sign.

Seen any new kinds of content out there lately? Any clues, or pointers in the right direction?