In Filterworld, the most popular culture is also the most desiccated. It is streamlined and averaged until, like a vitamin pill, it may contain the necessary ingredients but lacks any sense of brilliance or vitality. This process happens not by force, in the way of a mold stamping metal, but by compliance, as creators voluntarily shape their work t

they compress everything into content that fuels them. Like water flowing into a pot, the creative impulse changes to fit the shape of the containers that we have for it,

building smaller communities of consumption devoted to more specific subjects can lead to a much deeper sense of engagement, both with the content and among the users.

“It’s a question of making something available to someone who otherwise wouldn’t have known about it,” Cavalconte said.

the act of putting one thing next to another is an incredibly important one and should be left to people with deep knowledge about or passion for the subject at hand—people who care about the significance of proximity. They are our “trusted guides,” as Antonelli put it. That practice of ordering can even become an art form in itself.

Instead of a productive progression through experiences, we have an increasingly indistinguishable morass.

“I believe that my job is not to tell people what’s good and what’s bad, but rather, it’s to stimulate their own critical sense,” she

Many years ago, she had concluded that curators at their best are “trusted guides.” “They are specialized in something,” she said, whether that’s olive oil in a supermarket or American paintings from the 1960s. What’s more, curation is a two-way street: one always must be aware of the viewers, their perceptions, reactions, and even emotional states

they utilize all of their knowledge, expertise, and experience in order to determine what to show us and how to do it, with utmost sensitivity and humanity.