#56: Content Dreams of Itself
Matt Levine began his newsletter yesterday by discussing investment banks' tradition of publishing research notes that predict the World Cup winner. Before summarizing the various statistical methods that Nomura, ING, and Goldman Sachs used to predict their results ("three portfolios of teams to watch"!), Levine observes that "the analysts are not really in the business of predicting investment returns. They are in the business of producing content that will improve their banks’ relationship with their customers."—the World Cup being a perfect opportunity to produce such content. That's kind of obvious, but the word "content" has become so loaded and so central to culture that its usage is often a thread worth following. In the example above, content is a form of oil that reduces the scraping metallic friction between big, sinister banks and the guarded outside world.
It's interesting to think of content's role as a lubricant for the global economy because, while content has always been powerful, it's never been so ubiquitous as it is now, and if carefree World Cup predictions in a few research reports are enough to ingratiate banks to customers, what does that mean for the rest of us, who spend so much of our waking lives immersed in content? As the current master narrative suggests, it might mean we're all easier than ever to manipulate, if only it were as simple as one party trying to manipulate us. The internet in its current configuration, more than books or newspapers or even television, has split reality into two layers that Levine's statement make visible: not a physical layer and a digital layer, but a content layer and the layer underneath where the functional goals are pursued (like actual investing, in the banks' case): the interface and the server; or the front end and the back end. It's tempting to think of the content layer as an illusion that hides what's really happening underneath, but both layers are equally real.
Architecture critics Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown, attempting to process the blinding novelty of 1970s Las Vegas, coined the term "decorated shed" to describe buildings whose bombastic ornamentation and signage dwarfed and concealed their actual architectural structure, which was often boring and shed-like (here's a classic example). The Vegas Strip's emergence as an entire environment made up of decorated sheds foreshadowed life online, in which everything visible is an interface and surrounds us so completely that we forget about what's behind it, not because it's invisible but because it's mundane and ugly. We've always lived with content—cave paintings are content—but for most of history the interfaces that delivered that content weren't comprehensive enough to become their own version of reality. We still can't tweet our way out of global crisis, unfortunately, but a good starting point would be learning to appreciate the shed as much as the decoration.
Reads:
Nashville's downtown revitalization and what's wrong with it: How too much American urbanism depends on "an endless supply of glamorous, leisure-seeking young globalists who transition seamlessly from architects' renderings to real life."
The Price of Shares: Rob Horning on the museum's evolution in the digital age and the "urbanization" of art (art is no longer individual works but an "arena of exchange").
As GDPR looms, it's time to update your personal terms of service.
Until next time,
Drew