Is Great Content Finally Coming of Age?

What do you think: is the Internet more about content or more about technology?

So far, the answer is obvious. By taking a simplistic, macro view of the largest companies to dominate the computer and information age, you can easily conclude that it’s been about technology:

1. Microsoft: make it easy to use computers
2. Google: make it easy to use the Internet
3. Facebook: make it easy to share things with people

This isn’t a bad thing, of course. It’s a necessary thing. This conversation we’re having now, this blog, your email, our tweets—none of it would exist without technology.

But if so much time, money and energy has been put into building the ultimate content delivery platform, why is the web still a cesspool of content? Why are so many sites hitting the top spots in Google serving up the products of content farms and worthless info marketing products, aka hot steaming piles of spam?

Isn’t is time for the “real” writers, editors and publishers to finally apply their centuries-old craft to the less-than-three-decades old digital age?

Do we leave it to Shakespeare to make the call?

It was only a matter of time before someone had to bring up the master of excellent content William Shakespeare. Consider the story of Henry IV, Part I:

Prince Henry, indolent son of King Henry, did little more than drink and party with his vagrant friends in the seedy taverns of London. It’s all fun and games until Henry gets called back to royal court by his father to save him from an overthrow. In the ensuing battle, Henry defeats the leader of the uprising in single combat, saves his father’s life and assumes his proper birthright as Prince.

Prince Henry represents content on the Internet—where it is now (drunk and irresponsible in a shady bar) and where it inevitably must go (to battle to restore its integrity and title as King).

Listen up: it’s only a matter of time before the such dazzling technology gets commonplace and we begin to wonder what it was all for in the first place.

Content is the life of the web. Let’s make it so.

Photo from here.