The irony is blog posts do consume attention, if I read this blog post, that is time, energy, and effort I am using exclusively on that—and I wonder if it’s a mixed metaphor? If we actually internalize and learn something from a piece of media, be it a blog post, a documentary, a book, a lecture etc. etc. we are said to have “digested it”. And “consume” is a lazy analogy to eating rather than an apt description of what is going on.
Software is not consumed by use. In fact, software is duplicated by use. If you install Linux on a new computer, there are now more copies of Linux in existence, not fewer. You have not consumed a Linux; you have produced one, by mechanical reproduction, like printing a new copy of an existing book.
But in practice, most people will now be locking themselves into a Linux ecosystem. Dual-Boots are the minority. Therefore most users have been ‘consumed’ by Linux, or Emacs vs. Vim.
Maybe the active-passive/agent-patient assignment is confused? It is not we who consume the blogpost, the blogpost consumes us. It is not we who consume software, the software consumes our resources.
Information can be duplicated and therefore not consumed, but any time attention is paid to it, it is consuming that finite resource. Information duplication doesn’t create more attention. There can be plenty more information, and no one to digest it.
The irony is blog posts do consume attention, if I read this blog post, that is time, energy, and effort I am using exclusively on that—and I wonder if it’s a mixed metaphor? If we actually internalize and learn something from a piece of media, be it a blog post, a documentary, a book, a lecture etc. etc. we are said to have “digested it”. And “consume” is a lazy analogy to eating rather than an apt description of what is going on.
But in practice, most people will now be locking themselves into a Linux ecosystem. Dual-Boots are the minority. Therefore most users have been ‘consumed’ by Linux, or Emacs vs. Vim.
Maybe the active-passive/agent-patient assignment is confused? It is not we who consume the blogpost, the blogpost consumes us. It is not we who consume software, the software consumes our resources.
Information can be duplicated and therefore not consumed, but any time attention is paid to it, it is consuming that finite resource. Information duplication doesn’t create more attention. There can be plenty more information, and no one to digest it.