Just what do you mean by content?
Considering that recent statistics tell us that over 50 million (predominantly
American) youths have accounts at MySpace, it's
easy to believe the findings of the
recent Pew study that determined that about half of the youth population of
the U.S. had actually contributed content to the internet. But that study didn't
go into details. It didn't tell us whether the content that teenagers have posted
to the web is a book review, or some other class assignment, or perhaps a comment
in an online forum, or even a photograph contributed to a family album that sits
on the web. An online chat room might also be characterized as content. Examples
such as these aren't particularly convincing as evidence of a developing participatory
culture - a half hour spent clicking through MySpace suggests that of those 50
million accounts many (as we've seen in previous online incarnations of community)
are hardly even first steps, but instead halting crawls. If these contributions
are what is defined as content it's hard not to be reminded of the fact that running
a cash register at Macdonald's (which basically entails knowing which buttons
should be pushed) is considered working with a computer.
Go to: It's just too Oh!