Inseparably Inseparable

Creative Commons license, free to reproduce. Image by lumaxart.

Michael Wesch's beautifully crafted video on the changing landscape of web technology makes an important point about HTML -- that the content of websites used to be determined by the elements that the HTML language allowed, such as <li> (which allows lists), <p> (which makes new paragraphs), <b> (which makes things bold), and <i> (which makes things italic).

This brought me back to my high school days, which, pre-2005, fell squarely in the Web 1.0 paradigm, when I was tinkering around on my computer making websites using HTML. I had learned the coding language from a library book, and actually composed most of my website content upstairs in my bedroom computer, which had no access to the Internet. The fact that I was able to make a functional website without access to the Internet illustrates Wesch's point beautifully: the coding language limits what content is possible, or as he puts it, "form and content [are] inseparable in HTML."

But then he makes a surprising left turn. "Digital content can do better," he says. "Form and content can be separated."

To make his argument, he goes on to show how XML pushed the limitations of HTML, allowing for much greater flexibility for both content creators and consumers. People can read blogs on a website, or on their RSS readers. I remember being frustrated with wanting to make my websites more dynamic, only to find that even as the technology moved faster than my grasp of it, I was actually more capable of making more complex websites, using XML tools such as Blogger and Wordpress. Danielle's great post further explains the difference between XML and HTML.

But the idea that form and content can be separated -- even if their relationship does indeed become more flexible -- is wrong, and dangerous. Form will always limit and inspire content, and desire for content will always inspire new developments in "form technology." Form and content are, and will always be, inseparably inseparable.

One of the examples of this riffs off Wech's final and astute point that ethics will need to be rethought with dynamic tools. Companies, such as Facebook and Twitter, actually shape the content of human discourse, by creating -- and choosing not to create -- the tools they have. Why can I "like" something but not "dislike" it? Is it a technological impossibility? No -- the form of Facebook is limited because someone decided it should be that way, and it shapes how I behave and think. And if I want to communicate an idea on Twitter, I must craft it within the parameters of an SMS message. These technological limitations are, in a real way, shaping human behavior and thought. And despite how powerful theses tools are, they will always be limited, either by technological barrier or design.

Facebook's development shows, perhaps, the most dramatic shift. Going from a static "wall" to an autobiographical "timeline" has profound implications for how we can, and how they want us, to use that digital tool. Are we blindly led with every new update?

As we navigate the exciting tools of XML and dynamic content, we must never lose sight of the fact that content and form are always limited by each other, and that the reality of the Internet's limitations are often made not by technology, but by people. And the people are often not us.