I collected 241 items for 1997. And 10% of them are key texts. That's a bit odd.

Here I should share a note about how I'm going about things. As I noted in the initial "Years" post, I gather all the sources that mention "content creators" from a range of databases (JStor, Factiva, Gale, Nexis) as well as from running down references. Early on -- that is, pre-2012 or so -- this might result in a few hundred sources. (After that point I will use a different approach, to be explained in a later post.)

I read all these sources. Yes, I read them. I don't feed them into a machine or anything. I'm looking for patterns in how "content" is being conceptualized. I use Zotero tagging to tag sources with various conceptions. For example, "large-scale content creators" is a tag I use when the source mentions a large company -- think Disney or NewsCorp (both of whom have proudly referred to themselves as "content creators.").

Along the way, I flag some sources with a special tag: "key text." These are sources that say something surprising, or appear to mention a key idea for the first time.

Normally, I apply the "key text" to a small handful of the articles in a given year. For example, looking forward to 2011, I see I tagged 6 items that way, and in 2023 it was 11. It ends up being less than 10% of the articles.

1997 is a bit different -- 24 items (the highest number) are tagged as key texts. What gives?

Well, for one thing, a lot of surprising moments, and a lot of firsts. Let's get into it!

The container of the year, for sure, is the World Wide Web. CD-ROM, interactive TV, both discussed in previous years, are very much set aside.

Content creators continues to be used in press releases and news stories. The term itself has become a container, holding inside it a variety of older forms – photography, music, videography. See De Nike 1997 or "Extensis" 1997 for examples of this.

Convergence figures into this: rather than all media converging into a device, all media production converges into the form of the content creator -- see "Intergraph Announces" 1997. This may be tied to the politics of labor: less content creators doing more with digital tools as a cheaper alternative to the older, segmented system of musicians, artists, etc working on media productions.

Scale is tough to figure out – content creators almost becomes a container for scale. Big, small, individual, they all get contained here. There is the first mention of the "content creator community," which sounds like the network of individuals who make content (see Catchings and Van Name 1997). But we do see a continued downward shift to smaller and smaller content creators, and of course the repeated line -- the democratization trope -- that the users will become content creators. And, related to this, I found potential instances of individuals referring to themselves as "content creators." See Stevenson 1997 and Rowan 1997.

Digital rights management is often mentioned, so there's pilfering to consider. Containerization as a solution: Digiboxes and Cryptolopes, as seen in Fuller 1997, Gustavson 1997, Erickson 1997, and "Correction -- Softbank" 1997. There's discussion of watermarks this year -- ways to tag and contain content so that it can only be accessed by verified users.

Similarly, 1997 has a lot about content management systems: how to take all this content, store it, catalog it, process it, and move it? Donovan 1997, for example, expresses this well in relation to museums: thanks to content management systems, museums are no longer in the business of managing collections of heterogeneous artifacts, but are instead in the content production business. Sharples 1997 also discusses content management.

Related to this is the discussion of satellite TV in Beardsley et al 1997. I flagged that one because various genres of television (news, sports, movies) are all contained within the idea of "television content." Content creators here are those who make television content, so they tend to be mid- to large-scale. Then again, there are advertised jobs in digital video: see McIntosh 1997 for a discussion of those.

That McKinsey report on satellite TV is part of the year's interest in containment technologies. Who builds those? Here we have a major distinction: one non-content creator is the web developer or software developer who builds containment and flow technologies. See, for example, "Sun Delivers" 1997, "Uptimegroup" 1997, Taft 1997. Content creators are merely those who fulfill those containers.

There are technical/non-technical distinctions made here. See for example "Elemental Software" 1997, Kvitka 1997, and Shankar 1997. The presentation of the content creator is of a person/entity who is incapable of engaging with the underlying technology. This of course denies the technical aspects of any sort of artistry! Think back to the earliest mention in 1985 ("Double Life") – "I'm a form freak, not a content creator." Content may be king, but its creator is relegated to a nontechnical (and hence lower) status. Many of the articles flagged here, however, dream of making it easy for "non-technical" content creators to do things like program.

Similar to this, Detmer et al 1997 discuss medicine and the digitization of academic journals. What's interesting is it's a bit of inversion compared to Donovan 1997. Whereas Donovan argued museums would be more than mere museums -- they would become "content creators" -- Detmer et al note that medical practitioners would become more than mere "content creators" -- they would become "technological innovators." This is an early indication that "content creators" is sometimes a derided occupation.

A way to sharpen this technical/non-technical distinction could be through the wonderful parody text found in "Net Grrrls" 1997: the Built-in Orderly Organized Knowledge device, or BOOK. This parody of tech-speak would actually appear quite often. "The BOOK’s appeal seems so certain that thousands of content creators have committed to the platform. Look for a flood of new titles soon."

A question that has come up, again and again, is: who pays for content? McMillan 1997 directly considers this question, proposing (as others do) that things would be advertiser-supported.

Again, as I've observed elsewhere, aesthetics or ethics don't figure into any of this. Content is undifferentiated. So long as it fits the container, it is good content. The container must be built. 1997 has so much focus on the containers, contentification, DRM, content management, but relatively little to say about what content is being produced -- just that it is produced.

Key articles

Beardsley, Scott, Alan Miles, and John S. Rose. 1997. “A Bouquet of Choices: The Future of Direct-to-Home Television.” The McKinsey Quarterly, no. 1 (January): 56–82.

This McKinsey report is about satellite TV, “Direct To Home” TV. It’s about the transition away from terrestrial broadcast to subscriptions. The idea of “content” here is tied to television programming. Instead of “shows” or “programming,” it is content. “Content: the movies, news channels, sporting events, and/or general entertainment features that constitute an offer to consumers” (Beardsley et al., 1997).

Business Wire. 1997a. “Intergraph Announces High-End Compositing Capabilities for Windows NT-Based StudioZ Media Production Workstations.” April 7. http://global.factiva.com/redir/default.aspx?P=sa&an=bwr0000020011005dt4700uvr&cat=a&ep=ASE.

While so many sources in the 1990s and 2000s talk about "convergence" in terms of hardware (e.g. set-top boxes) or distribution channels (e.g., the Internet), this press release gets at the actual form of convergence that happened due to digital tools. The labor of "content creation" is done by smaller, and smaller teams because each individual can, as the CEOs and admins love to say, "do more with less."

Business Wire. 1997b. “Sun Delivers Java Studio -- Sun’s First-Ever Dynamic Java Authoring Tool For The Masses.” October 28. http://global.factiva.com/redir/default.aspx?P=sa&an=bwr0000020011005dtas02g2y&cat=a&ep=ASE.

This is similar to Taft 1997: it’s about enabling content creators/end users to program. It’s an indication that “developers” or “programmers” are distinct from “content creators.” That’s been a consistent pattern in the corpus: that “code” is not “content,” but more of the means to build containers for content.

Catchings, Bill, and Mark L. Van Name. 1997. “The next Great Content Creation Platform Is... ?” PC Week 14 (32): 70–71.

This is an article exploring the hardware for “digital content creation”. Apple computers are most popular. Windows seen as the Borg. But Apple has had financial trouble. So why not Digital? “The tough part is to capture the minds and souls of the content creation community” (Catchings and Name, 1997, p. 1). I’m calling this a key text because I don’t think I’ve seen the construction “content creation community” before. This is mostly about IT departments buying computers for the ‘content creators’ on staff. Do they buy Macs? Maybe not, due to the troubled past. Do they buy Windows? Creators hate Windows! Hence… Digital!

De Nike, Kristina. 1997. “Ready-Made RAID.” MacUser, August 1.

This conceives of “content creator” as a container that holds “digital-video editor, graphic artist, desktop publisher, sound editor, Web-page designer, photographer.” This focuses on capacity (storage/containment). And there's questions of speed: how fast can the container be loaded and unloaded? Also locking the container down against pilfering.

Detmer, William M., and Edward H. Shortliffe. 1997. “Using the Internet to Improve Knowledge Diffusion in Medicine.” Communications of the ACM 40 (8): 101–9.

This is about IT in medicine. The digitization of medical journals, propagation of new knowledge in medicine. The idea is to publish electronically -- that will get knowledge out faster. There is a degree of content creator refusal: a shift from mere “content creators” to “technological innovators.” Discussion of how content is packaged -- teams that scour the web, vet medical content, and gather it for distribution.

Donovan, Kevin. 1997. “The Best of Intentions: Public Access, the Web and the Evolution of Museum Automation.” Proceedings of the Museums and the Web. Los Angeles, CA, USA 97: 127.

I’ve labeled this a key text because the author spends a great deal of time calling for a “content management system” for museum content -- all the text and notes for exhibits go into it. It helps with publishing. This is not the first time I’ve seen such a discussion -- much of it has been about things like ZDNet (iirc). But this is quite a clear call for content management in an non-publishing space. The argument here is that we museums can be content publishers and owners, much like Disney.

“Elemental Software Formed to Serve Fast-Growing Market for Industrial Strength Web Applications.” 1997. PR Newswire, March 12, 312LAW063-312LAW063.

“Nontechnical content creators” might be a tag worth using. It’s come up quite a bit -- they don’t want to code! They want to create. I’m labeling this a ‘key text’ because of this construction, although it’s certainly not the first time the concept of ‘nontechnical content creators’ has come up. WYSIWYG is about this, really. Reading more, the press release buries the lede a bit -- this is about modularized components of Web applications that people can stitch together. Hence the ‘nontechnical’ aspect.

Erickson, John Stephen. 1997. “Enhanced Attribution for Networked Copyright Management.” Ph.D., Dartmouth College. https://www.proquest.com/docview/304366008/abstract/7D1D79B5C1434E9CPQ/3.

This is a doctoral thesis done at Dartmouth in the school of engineering. It seems to be about attribution systems for “digital content” -- it reminds me both of Xanadu as well as Creative Commons. Digital content would have attribution metadata, and “users” could query this as they seek to make “derivative works.” Justification? “a problem of content piracy.” It also offers definitions for terms: content, content element: “a digital manifestation of an original creative work”; and creator: “the individual who originates a digital creative work.” And it also discusses “content containers” and “media containers” -- there’s this interesting bit: “The document container knows how to find and activate the components associated with the various storages. By definition, containers don't touch data owned by the components” (Erickson, 1997, p. 39). “The container, however, is ignorant of the data itself and simply views each piece of content as unstructured [67].” (Erickson, 1997, p. 40). I’ve labeled this a ‘key text’ for these reasons.

“Extensis(TM) Corporation Ships Version 1.0 of Extensis Mask Pro(TM).” 1997. PR Newswire, May 21, 521SFW002-521SFW002.

This is actually a very good distillation of how the Web, CD-ROM and multimedia became a container for a wide range of creations. Here it includes photographers and graphic designers. They get converged into “content creators.” This press release is for an Adobe Photoshop plugin to create masks. So it’s really a tiny little thing in the grand scheme. But this one paragraph shows how content becomes containerized through convergence.

Fuller, Desmond. 1997. “How Safe Is Your Computer System?” Training & Development 51 (5): 96–98.

Articulates computer security with copyright protection. Key text due to this.

Gustavson, Ron. 1997. “Parable’s ThingMaker: A Copyright and Content-Control Webolution.” EMedia Professional, October 1.

This is another text promising to make it easy for “non-technical content creators” to produce content for the Web. It also promises what would later be called “digital rights management.” Web “Things” are containers.

Kvitka, Andre. 1997. “TeamFusion Divides Web Chores.” InfoWorld 19 (47): 78A-78A.

Marking this a key text because it’s yet another one that contrasts web dev and content creation. It also touches on content management, versioning control.

Lesbiana. 1997. “Net Grrrls.” November. Archives of Sexuality and Gender.

This is a parody, turning the lowly book into the Built-in Orderly Organized Knowledge device. I will call this a key text although I wish it went a bit harder at the idea of content creation for a platform!

M2 Presswire. 1997. “PRINCIPAL DISTRIBUTION: Vertigo Unveils New 3D Tool for Digital Content Creators.” July 28. http://global.factiva.com/redir/default.aspx?P=sa&an=mtpw000020011007dt7s00jhy&cat=a&ep=ASE.

This mentions the “digital content creation marketplace” -- This is similar to Catchings 1997, which speaks of a “content creator community”.

McIntosh, Trudi. 1997. “THE TOP TEN NEW JOBS.” The Australian, August 23.

“Web television and broadband content creators” are the hot new jobs.

McMillan, Sally J. 1997. “Who Pays for Content in Cyberspace? The Role of Interactivity, Property Values of Content Creators, and Audience Size in Predicting Funding of Internet Sites.” Ph.D., University of Oregon. https://www.proquest.com/docview/304368385/abstract/7D1D79B5C1434E9CPQ/4.

This is, essentially, a study of how content production on the Web will be funded. The advertiser model is discussed, as well as the ability of content creators to produce audiences who can be delivered to those advertisers. There is a degree to which this is about user-generated content, or small-scale content creators.

Newsbytes News Network. 1997. “Corrected - Softbank Net Solutions To Unveil Beta Users.” June 30.

Here’s another mention of “digital containers.” It was clearly in the air -- digital rights management, protecting the “content value chain,” licensing from content creation to distribution to reseller to consumer.

Rowan, Geoffrey. 1997. “Why Electronic Cash Doesn’t Register: Browser.” Managing. The Globe and Mail (1936-) (Toronto, Ont., Canada), March 5.

THIS MAY BE IT. The first time I see someone refer to themselves as “a content creator.” I've definitely been watching for a self-identified, individual content creator. It’s oblique, though. He’s talking about himself -- he has a mortgage, so he is lusting after micropayments for his columns.

Shankar, Gess. 1997. “iNet Developer 3.0 Builds High-Impact, Dynamic Sites.” InfoWorld 19 (50): 64D-64D.

Another in the technical web dev versus non-technical content creator. What is really at issue is that creativity, art, music, is relegated to the non-technical, which is quite insulting to the artists and musicians who spent their lifetimes honing their techniques. This is not a particularly remarkable version of the trope, but this does reinforce the “non-technical versus technical” aspect of content creation.

Sharples, Hadley. 1997. “Grander Role Seen for Java Language.” Graphic Arts Monthly (Newton, United States) 69 (5): 90.

This strikes me as a key text because it encapsulates many trends: cloud computing/clients, content management, containerization. There's discussion of thin clients, and discussion of content management.

Stevenson, Mark. 1997. “[ Young, Educated Canadians like Jeff Stamp -... ].” CanWest News (Don Mills, Ont., Canada), November 6.

This is one of the first times someone is referred to as a content creator.

Taft, Darryl K. 1997. “Drum Roll, Please: Java Studio Makes Its Debut.” CMP TechWire, October 28.

This is about Java Beans, a visual way to program, which would enable mere content creators (who outnumber Web developers) to be able to program with a GUI. I think this is a key text in relation to the web and content. (Devs v. content creators)

The Times. 1997. “Uptimegroup PLC.” March 26. The Times Digital Archive.

It’s a job ad. The company focuses on “Internet content and entertainment.” Interesting, because this ad distinguishes content and development (among other things). Developers have to understand “content replication and deployment.” Editors “manage content” and “develop a freelance resource for content input.” They ought to come from the ranks of those who “produc[e] content.”