ANGLES

January 4th, 2021

Maintain a discipline of writing everyday about a new topic and the question inevitably occurs: how do you think of so many new ideas?  In a world now now augmented by the digital one, content is king, as they say.  So how is new content created, found, invented?  How does one generate new content?

The answer is that new content is actually very rare, and almost never occurs.  So how is content still king?  The answer to that requires refining the claim.  It’s not content that is king, but something about that content.

As many authors have pointed out and which has been discussed in previous episodes, most content is a kind of remix, a sort of sampled collage of prior content.  This might sound like just a flimsy disguise for stealing or plagiarism, and perhaps it is, but such a brand would miss the point: something new is occurring, its just not content.

A visual demonstration helps.  Imagine a coffee mug, of if there’s one near by, then take a moment to look at it.  Imagine a photograph of what you see.  Now spin the mug 180 degrees and take another snapshot.  Is it going to be the same image?  No, of course not.  Now spin the mug 1 degree and take a photo.  Is it the same?  It’s certainly very similar, but technically, no, it’s a different photo.  Now spin it half a degree back, and repeat.  Oh and now add a filter, or instead make a painting of it, or reverse the colours, or invert it, or flip it upside down or simply look at it while something incredibly impactful in other areas of life settles into your mind.

The content is always the same, what makes it different and fresh is a change in perspective.

And perspective is just an angle, it’s a filter.  Much of what our brain is doing as we experience reality is just filtering things out so that we can actually make sense of some of it. Content is effective when it enables our perspective to expand beyond it’s own current limitations, when we see the same world anew, from a new angle.

Content in the digital world is all about the angle we take.  And everyone has a unique perspective by default!  It’s quite literally not possible for someone else to have the same exact take on the world as another because we can’t inhabit the same exact physical circumstance nor even the same circumstantial perspective - we all, together, have different angles on what’s going on.