Check Your Pulse #55

The architecture of digital platforms encourage us to consume information because it’s in front of us, not because it’s relevant. On Twitter, nothing has to be remembered, studied, applied, or reflected on. It’s an environment that promotes distracted thinking and superficial learning.

The past few years have seen the rise of many knowledge management tools, online communities, and curation businesses. But what’s interesting is how these categories are remixing into new combinations of content, community, and software.

In short, the architecture of digital platforms has made us obsessive documenters and consumers of the present, yet largely indifferent to the archives we create.

We consume information recreationally, not as a way to achieve our goals.

the goal is not to consume more information. The goal is to think better, so we can achieve our goals.

Our feed-based information architecture is obsessed with the present.

But thus far, the conversation around “curation” has been too focused on the content – “what should I read?” – and not enough on the structure – “how do we collect, store, and contextualize the information we consume?” We seem to have forgotten that the goal is not to consume more information. The goal is to think better, so we can achieve our goal... See more

In short, the architecture of digital platforms has made us obsessive documenters and consumers of the present, yet largely indifferent to the archives we create.

Love this from Jesse Beyroutey : We’ve found that the primary source for a company’s dominance is whether it designs its product and business model to be perfectly aligned with its customers’ interests. A great test of alignment is whether the company benefits or suffers from increased transparency.