You're Doing It Wrong

Here's a fallacy you're going to here a lot in the next few years: "Quality content is dead, only cheap, shallow content will be produced in the internet age."  

This is crap.  When you hear it, the proper response will be to cringe, sigh, and promptly whack the speaker across the nose with a rolled up magazine and yell, "No!" forcefully at their face.  

You may hear this a lot because the internet is going to change the nature of content distribution and its consumption, and therefore will alter the nature of content itself.  Nothing is sacred and some of these changes will be painful.  Those feeling the pain are likely to lash out, and while it's okay to be sympathetic, it's not okay to let this lie propagate.

The truth is, there will be more great content than ever before.  The laws of large numbers virtually guarantee it as the sheer volume of content increases as production and distribution costs shrink and the materials required become cheaper and of a higher quality.    Already there is more quality content than I can readily consume, and it seems that that is nearly all I do these days.  Podcasts, blogs, web cartoons, twitter feeds, books, television, short films, accidentally fantastic home videos, and news all conspire to consume the majority of my free time.  

Yes, there will be a lot of bad content, but if you're consuming bad content that just means you're doing the internet wrong.