The bookends to Andrea Kao’s FOSS Backstage talk, Abundant with life: docs beyond the wall, are a word, content. Andrea says:

When we refer to “content” we’re referring to something that seems universally replaceable, reproducible, interchangeable, shapeless, formless, stuff. And we end up reducing ourselves…

It’s not as if I never say it, but I’ve long been uncomfortable with the word “content” to refer to the docs, essays, and other artifacts of my work. But I had thought of it in terms of diminishing the work itself.

Andrea makes a sharp point that diminishing the work diminishes the worker too. It reduces agency, increases a sense of passivity, and limits the connections between the people who make the docs.