Where does content stop and presentation start?

In a recent fit of de-cluttering, I scoured my office for print publications to dump. Some stuff had been sitting in a 'read this as soon as possible pile' for literally years. Yes, I leave a lot to be desired on the self-organization front but, in my defense, the world has moved on. I read a lot. I need to, in order to keep current. It is just that these days, the vast bulk of my reading is online. During that de-cluttering, it occurred to me that it has been about four years since anything I have written has appeared formally in the traditional print media. Yet, I appear to be writing more stuff than ever before. These days, end-to-end electronic text is where it is at. Writing for the web - often directly on the web itself - is where it is at. The world has truly moved on.

In the transition, a once-hallowed certainty has been thrown into the uncertainties of outrageous fortune. Namely, control over the final presentation of content. It is not too many years ago that I would prepare technical articles for print publication by working with so called 'galley proofs' of the final page layouts. These days, plain text goes out into the ether and can re-appear in many different shapes and sizes that I have no control over. It reminds me of the day I took the training wheels off my first bicycle and headed down that hill. An experience that was at once liberating and a little bit scary.

These days, an extra dimension of uncertainty has been added with Web technology. Obviously, striving for fine control over layout on the Web is as futile as it is complex. As futile as attempting to nail a jellyfish to your bicycle, while riding it down the hill at speed.

Thankfully, the presentation 'control freak' mentality is on the wane. However, in its place comes a tougher nut to crack for content creators. Think of it as a progression. In the pre-web days, there was nothing between you and your readers. You exercised fine control over the presentation of each and every paper page. Even if you were delivering content electronically, PDF allowed you to retain that fine control. Then the web came along. All of a sudden browsers, could decide how your content should look. That was scary but we learned to love it and concentrate on the content itself. Nowadays, even the content itself is no longer sacrosanct. As a humorous example, take a look at NetDisaster[1].

How did those flowers get onto my Website?

Exactly.

How far can you take this concept? Could we change the words? Add links where no links currently exist? Pick pictures at random to replace the ones of the web page? Change existing links to something else? Yes, all of the above.

For a flavor of where this might be headed, take a look at grease monkey[2]. Two recent portents of things to come are Microsoft SmartTags, and, more recently Google Auto-Tags.

The key question these developments cause us to ask is this - where does content stop and presentation start?

The boundary between content and presentation used to be very clear cut. I used to think I had a good handle on where the boundary lay but the more I think about it, the less certain I am.

[1] http://www.netdisaster.com/go.php?mode=flowers&lang=en&url=http://seanmcgrath.blogspot.com/


[2] http://geekswithblogs.net/meshel/archive/2005/02/23/24196.aspx

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