Converging ASS+U+M[E]+ptions
Blogs: An example of a form/content split
We can observe a shift happening when we move from designing form and content together in HTML (albeit with little grace in early websites) to designing form and content separately (and sometimes not at all) in dynamically coded database applications such as blogs, content-management systems, and social networking sites. As an example of this shift in new media technologies—a shift which allows for the separation of form and content, arguably making online communication that much easier for n00bs—consider that even our most technologically illiterate students can be taught to create and post to a blog. Wesch pointed this out. Blogs are an excellent example of the split between form and content. As teachers of print and new media design, for us to focus on posting written content to the Web via someone else’s pre-designed template seems counterintuitive at times. Posting to a blog doesn’t require specialized knowledge; it doesn’t require, say, an understanding of the grammars of HTML. (It can draw on such knowledge, but does not require it.) In this way, Web 2.0 represents a monumental technological, social, and cultural shift as well as a scholarly and creative one, and yet it returns us to the old argument of form versus content.