Curation
The art of creating value by providing context and meaning to apparently disconnected information bits
Robin Good and
Curation
The art of creating value by providing context and meaning to apparently disconnected information bits
Robin Good and
Algorithmic mediocrity has triggered a renaissance of human discernment, with consumers seeking trusted curators, insider communities, and editorial voices that offer genuine discovery.

Curating = Unpacking for a General Audience
Thomas B. Campbell, Director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, shares in this TED video, his journey to become a respected museum curator, and the valuable discoveries and insights realized along the way.
This passage, in particular, struck with me louder than a thousand words:
"We live in an age of ubiquitous information, and sort of "just add water" expertise, but there's nothing that compares with the presentation of significant objects in a well-told narrative... what the curator does, the interpretation of a complex, esoteric subject, in a way that retains the integrity of the subject, that makes it -- unpacks it for a general audience."
This is a guide for how we can build “info molecules” that have a lot more value than the atomic world we live in now. First, what are info atoms? A tweet is an atom. A photo on Flickr is an atom. A conversation item on Google Buzz is an atom. A Facebook status message is an atom. A YouTube video is an atom.
Thousands of these atoms flow across our screens in tools like Seesmic, Google Reader, Tweetdeck, Tweetie, Simply Tweet, Twitroid, etc.
A curator is an information chemist. He or she mixes atoms together in a way to build an info-molecule. Then adds value to that molecule.
“Bad news: The foremost experts in cultural analysis are reporting concepts and phrases which are statistically commonplace. [...] We’ve lost sight of what it means to be brave. It feels like our facilities for riskiness and imagination have atrophied.”
Meta Trends 2024 by Matt Klein