Curation
The art of creating value by providing context and meaning to apparently disconnected information bits
Robin Good and
Curation
In the age of infinite information, the competitive advantage isn't knowledge—it's wisdom. Not those who know the most, but those who can discern what matters. Not processing power, but purpose. Those who can extract meaning, connect dots across domains, and make wise decisions despite uncertainty are more likely to thrive.
Michael Simmons • Information Singularity: What Happens When Even AI Experts Can't Keep Up With AI
In 1997, Malcolm Gladwell published his piece The Coolhunt, investigating the process of looking for new fashion trends at street level.
According to Gladwell, the coolhunter plays a major social role in spreading trends. Coolhunters were “the first to realize... that social status didn’t lay where Madison Avenue had said it lay in the 1950s and... See more
According to Gladwell, the coolhunter plays a major social role in spreading trends. Coolhunters were “the first to realize... that social status didn’t lay where Madison Avenue had said it lay in the 1950s and... See more
Gaby Goldberg • Curators All the Way Down
When a brand builds a universe specific enough, coherent enough, richly curated enough, the right people recognize their own taste reflected. The shouting becomes unnecessary.
The world speaks for itself. And the people who belong there find their way home.
But most brands won’t do this. It’s too slow, too difficult, too dependent on taste as a real... See more
The world speaks for itself. And the people who belong there find their way home.
But most brands won’t do this. It’s too slow, too difficult, too dependent on taste as a real... See more
Fatema Raja • The Taste Renaissance
To understand is to enter into a relationship with people, with things, with ideas. AI can imitate the language of relationships, but it stands outside of them. Our task is to keep knowledge alive by remaining in conversation with the world that gives it meaning.
The Meaning of an Apple
"Agriculture made towns and cities possible, made it possible to meet and associate with far more people than was possible in hunter-gatherer tribes.
Eventually, poets could meet poets, artists could meet artists, and musicians, musicians. The potential of a group of competent musicians is so much greater than the sum of them all in ones and twos.
But large cities have been with us for thousands of years now, and somehow the advances brought on by civilisation seem to have run dry, and urban decay has begun to manifest.
Provided that people can still communicate and work together, the next step forward in human cultural terms might well be independent from physical proximity – it might be through association by choice.
Perhaps now is a good time for the better application of those information technologies that have been developed in recent decades, in supporting storage and reuse: not of food, as in neolithic times, nor even of money, where information technology applied to finance has enabled both wonderful and dreadful things.
It is now the turn of personal information to be the focus of the new technology – information technology – so that we can present ourselves and the values we have chosen to others, and let that information be used for the further positive transformation of society."
For brands, archives serve a parallel function: heritage as intellectual capital. Referencing your own past demonstrates institutional depth, creative continuity, and legitimacy that new brands cannot manufacture. In a world of conglomerate acquisitions and proliferating labels, archives prove you were there first. And that you still matter today.
Why Fashion Is Obsessed With Archives
To understand the role of a curator today, think of a sieve in a gold rush: the AI provides the massive pile of silt and sand (the data), but the curator's "taste" is the mesh that allows the worthless dirt to fall through while catching the rare, valuable nuggets of gold. Without the sieve, you just have a pile of dirt; with it, you have a... See more
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The curator of the digital world is positioned as mediator and tastemaker, using content created elsewhere as raw material for the making of meaning.
Curating the Digital World: Past Preconceptions, Present Problems, Possible Futures | MW2013: Museums and the Web 2013
Who are they?
They seek out the hidden gems, the overlooked treasures, and the paths less traveled, saving you from the endless noise of mainstream repetition.
They are the ones who:
They seek out the hidden gems, the overlooked treasures, and the paths less traveled, saving you from the endless noise of mainstream repetition.
They are the ones who:
- dare to question , to explore.
- are moved by a sincere desire to bring back discovery and new meaning.
- ignite the spark of curiosity that modern convenience and