What Are Your Motives?

There's a fundamental discord in the way various groups treat the internet. Purists, for example, see the internet as an art form that should be kept free, unregulated, and consistently advanced. Entrepreneurs see the internet as a free market where advertising and online sales points can be established quickly at low costs. Visionaries see the internet as a way to change the world. Friends see the internet as a social gathering place, artists see it as a new medium or tool, and students see it as a place to learn and share ideas. Most people instinctively realize that the possibilities for content generation on the web are virtually endless. As with other endeavors, motives behind content generation directly influence the types of content produced.

In Howells' turn of the century novel A Hazard of New Fortunes, a variety of characters with different motives converge along a trend toward American industrialization and city living. The group meets in New York City to create a chic magazine called Every Other Week. They include March, a complacent businessman who goes with the flow; Fulkerson, an enthusiastic advertising spin man; Lindau, a German-born socialist; Dryfoos, an anti-union bankroller; Woodburn, a former Confederate colonel who believes slavery could still work if they improved the system; Beaton, a shallow cover artist; and Leighton, a beautiful and inadvertent feminist. The way each of these personalities approaches content generation for Every Other Week is at once similar to the way different camps approach internet content generation today.

Consider the ad-man: on page 141, the Every Other Week provides a mechanism for Fulkerson to talk candidly about the state of women and the potential redefinition of women's issues in the urban landscape. The conversation occurs in a private board meeting, but the content Every Other Week produces in its wake is reflective of its motives.

"We want to make a magazine that will go for the women's fancy every time," Fulkerson says. Then later, "[w]e've got to recognize that women form three-fourths of the reading public in this country, and go for their tastes and their sensibilities and their sex-piety along the whole line . . . it'll make the fortune of the thing. See? . . . they haven't got the genius of organization. It takes a very masculine man for that."

With a dearth of opinions on women's issues in the group of men at the board meeting, Fulkerson's perspective goes uncontested, as does his motive to generally make a fortune of the magazine. Every Other Week thus begins to target women to create content for their fancies and unintentionally begins to redefine what the fancies of women should be. The magazine becomes as much a part of the development of women's issues as a generator of its content.

Do we see Fulkersons on the internet today? Are there businessmen or women who seek profit at the expense of all else? Are particular groups targeted? For what purposes?

Here we see that motives shade content generation and can even produce unexpected results. A Hazard of New Fortunes parallels the internet in its recognition of production bias. It's a particularly good parallel because the Every Other Week represents a diversity of content generators collaboratively striving to influence a large audience.

Here's an invitation: before you create your next blog post, podcast, audiobook, ebook, or store front, review your motives. Which camp(s) do you fall into? Are you a hobbyist or a professional? An academic or an entertainer? Is your content meant to inspire, provoke, transcend, or amuse? I think these are important questions. More posts on this topic to come.