Curation
The art of creating value by providing context and meaning to apparently disconnected information bits
Robin Good and
Curation
Influencers (by definition and per contract) are paid to recommend; curators earn trust by choosing. Different economic incentives yield different results. Influence is a media buy. Curation is a reputation. Not having everything for everyone is a feature, not a bug.
The Future of Search is Taste.
only once you can be a curator can you become a creator
Substack • Search "curation" on Substack
The article argues that LLM-powered wikis solve Vannevar Bush's 1945 maintenance problem but fail to address his more fundamental vision: the "trail"—a personally-voiced, sequenced path through knowledge built by committing to ideas, discovering they're wrong, and revising them.
The distinction matters because synthesis (what wikis do) prevents the frame-revision thinking that produces original writing, while trails require the cognitive pressure that comes from irreversible commitment.
Synthesis itself is the problem: by resolving tension before a writer commits to a position, the system removes the pressure that forces thinking. The distinction matters because it redefines what "better" knowledge systems should actually do—protect unresolved problems rather than solve them.
A trail was not a list of related documents. It was a sequenced, annotated, personally voiced path through knowledge — built by a human mind as it moved through the stored material, making connections, adding marginal notes, recording the reasoning behind each associative jump. Bush imagined that researchers would share their trails with each... See more
Nodes and Trails
Tools like Sublime, Glasp, Arena, Cosmos let us put aside “nodes”. None helps surfaces our “trails”.
Ce que la curation implique, et que la sélection n’implique pas, c’est la responsabilité. Le curateur signe ses choix. Il peut se tromper et sa réputation en dépend. Cette prise de risque intellectuel est ce qui distingue un acte curatorial d’un acte algorithmique et c’est précisément ce qui lui confère de la valeur dans un monde où les algorithmes... See more
Ermina STRATULAT • Curation ou sélection ? La différence qui change tout.
curation is, if nothing else, interdisciplinary and relational, often mediating between past and contemporary ideas for an audience. If done skillfully, the curator performs multiple roles simultaneously, as storyteller, educator, critic, collaborator and entertainer.
The many faces of curation: the evolution and legacy of presenting art
build a reputation as someone worth following even beyond their own writing.
Substack • Search "curation" on Substack
The orchestration of people, products, and ideas into systems of meaning that others recognize, adopt, and aspire to.