I love spending time with words. I am really getting into the depths of the dictionary and having a physical Thesaurus on my end table next to my working chair. Words matter for my writing and storytelling, but words matter in a time where they are often being drained of meaning resulting in zombie commercial words that are ubiquitous but devoid of any of their previous meaning. In the age of artificial intelligence and endless content creation I want to understand where I fit in with my endless stream of information and content about APIs and technology, but also guarding my knowledge and pushing back on the way that people are wielding the word intelligence — to help me on this journey, let’s bust out the dictionary.
Information
I have long been a student and believer of information. From information management to information architecture, I’ve spent a lot of time in the temple. However, the more I study history and learn about how the Information Age was crafted and deliberately planned by a bunch of white guys, I’ve become more skeptical of my complicity in the foundation our world operates on today.
- facts provided or learned about something or someone.
- what is conveyed or represented by a particular arrangement or sequence of things.
- the giving or receiving of knowledge or intelligence.
- knowledge obtained from investigation, study, or instruction.
For me, information has always been about the receiver of the information. It was about providing some seed of an idea that when you give it to someone it grows into something more. Hence the “formation” part of the word, with the in being the transmission. Like APIs I’ve learned that this remains true, but can also be about planting seeds, manipulating, measuring, surveillance, and control.
Content
Content has never been trustworthy in my book. Well on it’s way to already being meaningless to me in an online environment, but I happily have dealt in the content realm, buying, selling, and using it to hustle people online. Content is a mostly harmless representation of draining words of their meaning and a line I have happily walked while publishing to my own domain, but also to other people’s domain.
- the subject or ideas contained in something written, said, created, or represented
- the topics or matter treated in a written work
- the principal substance (such as written matter, illustrations, or music) offered by a website
- the events, physical detail, and information in a work of art
- the matter dealt with in a field of study
- a part, element, or complex of parts
I haven’t been alarmingly suspicious of content until recently. Mostly because it is such a commodity, with armies of mindless drones slinging it as if it matters. I’ve experienced numerous companies reducing my stories to content over the years, to the point I’ve almost come to expect it. However, over the years, content has become the dividing line between what I publish in others domains, and what I put in my domains.
Intelligence
This word has never intrigued me. I habe always been skeptical of it even though I didn’t fully understand the history of its usage. Now I better understand how it’s been weaponized from the beginning and I am suspect of anyone wielding it consciously or unconsciously. I immediately begin with the military or political value definition and then quickly move towards a eugenics and more disturbing definition—-with very little positive ground in between.
- the ability to acquire and apply knowledge and skills.
- the collection of information of military or political value.
- the ability to learn or understand or to deal with new or trying situations
- the act of understanding
- the ability to perform computer functions
I don’t believe in intelligence. I think it is a word with almost no positive use cases. I think it is all about categorizing people, and more about being able to label people as stupid than it is about identifying anything resembling intelligence. It is all about categorization and establishing domains of control, which is why I think it works so well with what is happening right now with predictive and other forms of computation.
Knowledge
The word knowledge still feels good to me. I possess knowledge about APIs and the technology shaping our world today. I aim to keep strengthening this knowledge each and every day, defending the knowledge I have accumulated, while also working to defend abuses of the word knowledge. In a world of artificial intelligence I am confident that we need to entrench ourselves within our respective areas of knowledge, push back and defend it against the darker forces of computation.
- facts, information, and skills acquired by a person through experience or education; the theoretical or practical understanding of a subject.
- what is known in a particular field or in total; facts and information.
- awareness or familiarity gained by experience of a fact or situation.
I really like the accumulation and focus of knowledge. I feel like it still has credibility as a word and those who don’t have it avoid using it. This matters. I feel like knowledge is where you have to demonstrate something, where information is about someone else, content means next to nothing, and intelligence is about command and control. I still fight the good fight in the information and content realms, but knowledge is where I’ll die on the hill.
Conclusion
If I was to order these words in the order of meaning, purpose, and safety, I’d go with 1) Knowledge, 2) Information, 3), Content, and 4) Intelligence. With intelligence being dangerous, and knowledge being safety and purpose if you are willing to do the work. I don’t give up on information despite being completely aware it is Madmen, Severance, and the Matrix all wrapped up into a marketing phrase for a corporate outfit trying to control the population. Content doesn’t scare me. It is noisy. It’s annoying, but it can be fun to sling sometimes, and I can also get paid to do it. I’m kind of a cheap content whore like that.
I still am captivated by the idea that information can inform and change someone when done well. My positive definition and experience with information is right there with why I love application programming interfaces, or simply APIs. It is about making the seed of something good available for others to consume and in some situations that seed will grow into something useful or even amazing. However, information like APIs can also be used in service of planting seeds engineered in a laboratory that result in the growth of unnatural and unhealthy things the world could do without. In the end, intelligence is dangerous, content is mostly meaningless and benign, information can go both ways, and don’t fuck with my knowledge, cause I’ll fuck you up.
