How the Internet Turned Us Into Content Machines

Eichhorn uses the potent term “content capital”—a riff on Pierre Bourdieu’s “cultural capital”—to describe the way in which a fluency in posting online can determine the success, or even the existence, of an artist’s work.

“Cultural producers who, in the past, may have focused on writing books or producing films or making art must now also spend con... See more

Once upon a time, the Internet was predicated on user-generated content. The hope was that ordinary people would take advantage of the Web’s low barrier for publishing to post great things, motivated simply by the joy of open communication. But then ad sales came into play.

That business model is still what most of the Internet relies on today. Rev... See more

For Kate Eichhorn, a media historian and a professor at the New School, content is digital material that “may circulate solely for the purpose of circulating”

Rather than a tool, the Internet might best be seen as a “living system,” Smith writes. It is the fulfillment of a centuries-old human aspiration toward interconnectivity—albeit a disappointing one.

“Content is part of a single and indistinguishable flow.”

Like so many technologies that came before, it seems to be here to stay; the question is not how to escape it but how to understand ourselves in its inescapable wake.

In his new book, “The Internet Is Not What You Think It Is,” Justin E. H. Smith, a professor of philosophy at the Université Paris Cité, argues that “the present situation is intolerab... See more

Our feeds are designed to “prod the would-be attender ever onward from one monetizable object to the next,” he writes. This has had a deadening effect on all kinds of culture, from Marvel blockbusters that optimize for attention minute to minute, to automated Spotify recommendations that push one similar song after another.

the interface of the Internet, and the keyboard that gives him access to it, is less an external device than an extension of his questing mind. To understand the networked self, we must first understand the self, which is a ceaseless endeavor.

We know that what we post and consume on social media feels increasingly empty, and yet we are powerless to stop it. Perhaps if we had better language for the problem, it would be easier to solve. “Content begets content,” Eichhorn writes.

the ultimate problem of the Internet might stem not from the discrete technology but from the Frankensteinian way in which humanity’s invention has exceeded our own capacities.