Literally 2 Cents About Content!

As we approach the 30th anniversary of its release, Alex and Liz look back quasi-fondly at the Nintendo 64, including:

Alex and Liz discuss only some of the works of linguist, philosopher, and academic David Golumbia, including: 

Technology and Silicon Valley are often associated with left-leaning politics. Still, various causes (SOPA/PIPA discourse, internet publication and copyright discourse, digital innovation) have roots in libertarian or conservative and reactionary narratives. Golumbia’s work shows that it’s difficult (read: impossible) to divorce reactionary values from Silicon Valley and its staunchest supporters.

Reading list:

Alex and Liz talk about the Glassdoor reviews of their old employer, touch upon the challenges of working for an SEO content shop, and compare monopoly and monopsony.

Alex and Liz take a look at Kate Manne's 2024 book, Unshrinking: How to face fatphobia. Along the way, they examine some of the key assumptions that drive widespread fatphobia in contemporary society, what the point of weight loss is supposed to be, the history of hazardous weight-loss treatments, and how Manne's book intersects with other publications by Ragen Chastain, Abigail C. Saguy, Paul Campos, and Paul Ernsberger.

• Ragen Chastain on weight loss as a prescription

Liz and Alex talk about streaming, why its business model is so lousy compared to cable, the social aspects of watching TV vs the isolation of streaming, how sports holds linear TV together, and why it feels more sustainable to support individual creators than to pay for a bundle.

• Liz's website

Liz and Alex lay into their most disliked words from the content industry, from "dynamic content" and "content management system" to "optimize" and "authentic." Also covered: video game DLC (that's "downloadable content," remember!), store brand sodas, and the 1990s web.

Alex and Liz dig their claws into "AI," this time focusing on some recent hype-y conferences Liz attended in Chicago and Las Vegas. We also look at cyberlibertarianism, the difficulties that LLMs have with ambiguity (and why making them better at this could paradoxically make them worse overall), the costs associated with producing cutting-edge work, and the embedded biases of AI.

Alex's blog

Liz's site

We don't need generative AI 

At least the robber barons built things 

Is a neural network like a pocket calculator? “AI” and epistemic injustice 

Chatbot revolution? 

Alex and Liz talk about what really makes digital content different from physical and analog equivalents, and what distinctive ideological concepts—"everything's binary, monopolies are good, technology itself is the agent, users should be treated with hostility"— are uniquely embodied by it.

And even though everything digital seems ethereal and immaterial, it requires tremendous amounts of real resources—water, electricity, space—behind the scenes. We also dive into Leo Marx's famous "Technology: The Emergence of a Hazardous Concept" essay, discuss Martin Scorsese's dislike of Marvel (and what it says about "content"), how the Hollywood strikes were spurred by the content-ization of movies and TV, and spew some weird facts about vinyl records.

• Scorsese pieces: NYT (2019), GQ (2023)

Alex and Liz talk about the hottest topic out there—"AI," or "artificial intelligence" (quotes because we're a little skeptical of it being in any way "intelligent"), with a look at some recent essays that explore whether "AI" is agent or tool, its problematic uses in higher education, why Silicon Valley is so intent on building things ("AI" or otherwise) that they'd read about or seen in sci-fi (while also of course acting as if books, films, and other artistic endeavors are worthless, just like the rest of the humanities), and how Jonny Quest predicted the Apple Watch in 1964.

Alex's recent blog post on "the economy."

Liz's website.

Check out Liz's book at Barnes & Noble.

Rob Horning's essay, Pro tools.

The Emily Bender profile in New York magazine.

The empty brain.

Alex and Liz talk about their time at the content agency, how it was all about ghost writing, what techniques they honed by doing that (such as learning how to easily add 100-200 superfluous words to any article's intro), and how that overall experience influenced their personal writing. Liz talks about self-publishing her book and Alex talks about the histories and features of various blogging platforms.

Alex's blog about social media post-2016.

Liz's website.

Buy Liz's book!