At root, to consume is to devour; to eat up, use up, burn up. After something is consumed, it is no longer there. If I consume the whole pizza, you can’t have any because there’s none left. The house was consumed by fire; you can’t live in it because it’s not there anymore.
Economic consumers are eaters — hungry mouths to feed, who chew up and digest that which has been produced, to burn it in their bellies so that they may live. In order for more consumers to be fed, more must be produced; because consumption is rivalrous: what one consumer consumes, another consumer cannot also.
But now people talk about consuming blog posts. This annoys me. A blog post is not used up by reading it. After you read it, it has not been consumed, because it’s still there. You didn’t destroy it by reading it. Everyone else can read it too.
If you sit in the park on a sunny day, you are not consuming the park. You are not a fire burning it up and making it be not there anymore. You are enjoying the park, using the park; but it is not consumed because it is still there for everyone else.
If you consumed a thing, then that thing has been consumed, which means it’s not there anymore for anyone else to consume. If it is still there, then it has not been consumed, which means you didn’t consume it. Nobody ate the cookie; it is still there in the cookie jar.
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.
A pizza goes away when you use it as intended. Software goes away when you stop using it: when it is purged from cache, unloaded from memory, overwritten from storage.
Energy, labor, and time are consumed by use. Information is not consumed by use (reading, watching, installing software, etc.). Information is duplicated, propagated, reproduced by use.
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.
I am annoyed about the word “consume”.
At root, to consume is to devour; to eat up, use up, burn up. After something is consumed, it is no longer there. If I consume the whole pizza, you can’t have any because there’s none left. The house was consumed by fire; you can’t live in it because it’s not there anymore.
Economic consumers are eaters — hungry mouths to feed, who chew up and digest that which has been produced, to burn it in their bellies so that they may live. In order for more consumers to be fed, more must be produced; because consumption is rivalrous: what one consumer consumes, another consumer cannot also.
But now people talk about consuming blog posts. This annoys me. A blog post is not used up by reading it. After you read it, it has not been consumed, because it’s still there. You didn’t destroy it by reading it. Everyone else can read it too.
If you sit in the park on a sunny day, you are not consuming the park. You are not a fire burning it up and making it be not there anymore. You are enjoying the park, using the park; but it is not consumed because it is still there for everyone else.
If you consumed a thing, then that thing has been consumed, which means it’s not there anymore for anyone else to consume. If it is still there, then it has not been consumed, which means you didn’t consume it. Nobody ate the cookie; it is still there in the cookie jar.
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.
A pizza goes away when you use it as intended. Software goes away when you stop using it: when it is purged from cache, unloaded from memory, overwritten from storage.
Energy, labor, and time are consumed by use. Information is not consumed by use (reading, watching, installing software, etc.). Information is duplicated, propagated, reproduced by use.
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.