Curation

There will always be creators. But the ones who stand out in this era are also curators. People who filter their worldview so cleanly that you want to see through their eyes. People who make you feel sharper just by paying attention to what they pay attention to.

The internet has flattened information access so thoroughly that hoarding knowledge is no longer impressive. What matters now is what you do with it. How you filter it. How you recognize signal in the noise.

Curation is the new IQ test.

History shows that successful adaptation requires taking active control of information filters rather than passively accepting them. Just as Renaissance scholars developed personal commonplace books to organize knowledge, and early internet users created bookmarking systems before Google dominated search, we need personalized AI curation systems al... See more

As information volume and complexity grew, simply keeping pace became a specialized profession. In other words, information specialists who do nothing but track developments in more and more narrow domains emerge.

The curator relationship operates at a fundamentally different psychological level than advertising. An algorithm might know you like blue Oxford shirts, but a tastemaker knows why a particular blue Oxford matters in a lineage of blue Oxfords. This contextual knowing, placing objects in historical and cultural frameworks rather than recommendation ... See more

A recommendation from Emily Sundberg's Feed Me isn't an endorsement; it's an anointing. The mechanism isn't mysterious: curators build trust not by being right but by being wrong in interesting ways. They earn the right to be occasionally mystifying because they've proven they're making actual choices rather than optimising for metrics. This explai... See more

The critical distinction is that today's gatekeepers derive authority not from institutional power but from demonstrated discernment. Cultural capital now flows to those who can navigate overwhelming abundance with skill and intention.

"The most credible form of advertising comes straight from the people we know and trust. Eighty-three percent of online respondents in 60 countries say they trust the recommendations of friends and family". - Nielsen 2015