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It’s AI slop, that’s why.
OP here. I wrote the post myself with no AI (modulo grammar checks). What makes you think it's AI-generated?
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I think we disagree on the connotation of the word "lead." To me, if someone describes me as a "lead," it implies that they are focused on making the sale rather than on anything else about the business relationship. I would also find it unsettling if a doctor told me that I was a "good lead" because I had a disease they treat.
Jargon is field-specific. In medicine you’d be a good referral (“I’m glad they sent you to me”) or an interesting case. The field does not use “lead” for that in the way that contemporary sales does. Discordant terminology is reasonable to be wary of. Consider for the moment the two cases of an agent for a player or actor and a doctor. It’s normal for an agent to discuss commission and for a doctor to not, though bot…
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I got all of that, I just found the David example to be distracting from and unrelated to the more interesting argument that you're making, which I do agree with, and which I think you summed it up neatly here: > I just realized it's silly for me, an individual author to refer to my work as "content" when I could just as easily say "book" or "blog posts."
I appreciate the critique! Sometimes when I'm thinking about a blog post, I fall in love with a joke I want to use, but then it constrains how I think about the topic. I still like the David example, but I'm too close to the post to have a balanced perspective, just having finished it today.
Paintings, sculptures, blog posts, HN comments, etc. are all examples of different things that can be reductively viewed as "content" by those who only want to exploit them for profit, just like the illustration shows. I don't think the article is saying that these things are all the same.
You “create content” if what you’re after is just money, and “content” is this malleable goo you have to produce and shove it down the algorithm so that it gets “traffic”, another form of goo that gets “funneled” and “converted” into money. In other words, it loses all (human) meaning. So yes, if you care at all, you shouldn’t “create content”. You should be writing essays, recording tutorials, training, music, conve…
A long time ago Simon Peyton Jones said Haskell tries to "avoid success at all costs". He was being cheeky, but it honestly is how I try and approach most of what I do that isn't directly related to my employment (as a software person). My blog posts are just for me; I don't market them, I don't expect anyone else to read them, I don't spam links to all my friends every time I post anything. I have no idea if my writ…
That is, losing integrity for the sake of success is what's to be avoided, not success itself.
Since 2002 Richard Stallman has spoken again using term "content" this way. > using the word as a noun to describe works and communications through which people have expressed themselves adopts an attitude you might rather avoid: it treats them as a commodity whose purpose is to fill a box and make money. In effect, it disparages all the works by subordinating them to the box that is full. https://www.gnu.org/philoso…
The entirety of that compilation of words is worth a read. I recommend checking out "Artificial Intelligence", "Consume", "Consumer" and "Monetize", "Players" and "Product"
In my view, you don't get to dismiss LLMs as "stochastic parrots" unless you can argue with precisely defined terms why you ain't one.
I actually really like the term content creator , because it removes the artificial boundaries that come with being a writer, photographer, filmmaker, etc. and just lets you make stuff. The medium doesn't matter if you're a content creator, to a large extent. The alternative is "art" but that comes with a lot of other baggage that often sounds unintentionally pretentious, especially if you aren't actually creating pa…
You “create content” if what you’re after is just money, and “content” is this malleable goo you have to produce and shove it down the algorithm so that it gets “traffic”, another form of goo that gets “funneled” and “converted” into money. In other words, it loses all (human) meaning. So yes, if you care at all, you shouldn’t “create content”. You should be writing essays, recording tutorials, training, music, conve…
I am so glad someone said this! I get really mad when a PR person writes the word content in the press release for my company. We don't create content. To me "content" means you don't know what you are making or you are very embarrassed about it. We make art or entertainment that people pay for. In general there are two axis I think about in media. One axis is originality, the other axis is durability. Very unorigina…
I actually really like the term content creator , because it removes the artificial boundaries that come with being a writer, photographer, filmmaker, etc. and just lets you make stuff. The medium doesn't matter if you're a content creator, to a large extent. The alternative is "art" but that comes with a lot of other baggage that often sounds unintentionally pretentious, especially if you aren't actually creating pa…
Like it doesn’t fit podcasts at all really.
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FOSS is a legal and political tool that removes catastrophic dependency risk. It's not something that exists simply because software developers had free time to waste.
You can have commercial software with source or with reverse engineering rights. You can also just illegally reverse engineer it anyway - only matters if you get caught, and companies will only suffer civil penalties (fines). FOSS is now mostly sponsored by commercial enterprises. The part that isn't sponsored is dying or has died. Linux was a silly project by one guy, where are projects like that now?
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FOSS is a legal and political tool that removes catastrophic dependency risk. It's not something that exists simply because software developers had free time to waste.
You can have commercial software with source or with reverse engineering rights. You can also just illegally reverse engineer it anyway - only matters if you get caught, and companies will only suffer civil penalties (fines). FOSS is now mostly sponsored by commercial enterprises. The part that isn't sponsored is dying or has died. Linux was a silly project by one guy, where are projects like that now?
I love Haskell, I've spent a lot of time in the general area around functional programming, types, proofs and PL, and there is still a vibrant community with lots of amazing non-commercial projects there. I'm sure the same is true in other areas of the programming world.
Ditto for the Emacs world. Emacs and its package ecosystem are amazing, better than they've ever been, and ≈entirely driven by non-commercial work.
Same for a big chunk of NixOS, although there's also been some real commercial investment there now.
I never really thought about it before writing this comment, but, except for games, most of the software I use and care about is primarily community-driven rather than commercial. And it's absolutely great.
Despite smaller communities and low monetary investment, a remarkable number of things about Haskell and Emacs and Nix are simply better than any commercial alternative, full stop.
The problem isn't that this kind of software has died—it's thriving more than ever—but just that the rest of the field has grown around it even faster. Programming is so commercially valuable that there has been a ton of investment in it and now we have millions of people for whom it's just a career, and trillions of dollars pouring into companies powered, primarily, by programming. It's a wild time. The overall feel of the field is definitely different now, but you can still find classic hacker enclaves. You just have to cut through the noise first.