curation and decision fatigue

What were once largely memetic tribes are becoming increasingly embodied. We seem to be gravitating towards each other in ever more meaningful ways and creating new kinds of digital and physical culture in the process. This is for me the true potential of The Liminal Web, to cultivate whole new ecosystems of human relationship that are grounded in... See more

This recent surge of human-curated guidance is both a reaction against and an extension of the tyranny of algorithmic recommendations, which in the course of the past decade have taken over our digital platforms. Today’s automated social-media feeds deliver increasingly indistinguishable content now sometimes generated by artificial intelligence;

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I do believe that we are becoming an increasingly social society. It could very well be the era of introversion to extroversion. With this evolution and transformation, we’re concurrently subject to a greater set of distractions. And as such, we are sidetracked by choice and free will. But, as this is the dawn of the great attention economy, and... See more

Th ere are three main choices: algorithmic curation, social curation, and expert curation. Algorithmic curation is done automatically by computers running algorithms to try to decide what is the most relevant information on a given topic. In other words, Google. Google, as we all know, uses a complex series of mathematical equations to determine... See more

The richest insights are found in overlooked sources and connections that are beyond the reach of the internet and the incentives of its curatorial algorithms. My inspiration comes from unexpected places: the yellowed pages of out-of-print software books, modern science fiction essays, the writings of early religious leaders, and unique items in... See more

Culture is moving from productivity to creativity: I think there will likely be a pushback against AI slop by some members of the populace. AI makes content cheaper to create, but users will need new tools to help them build a sense of taste, of knowing what to create

Curators filter signal from noise in an increasingly noisy world. As the barriers to being a creator decrease, the internet gets even noisier and the need for credible curators increases. Algorithms will continue to play a role in aggregation, indexing, and personalization. But the best curation requires a human touch. You’re more likely to have an... See more

The ingredients of ‘good’ curation

I think great curation comes down to five key elements that span the processes of searching, selection and contextualizing:

1. Preservation: Caring for, reviving or resurfacing things that might otherwise be lost or forgotten in archives or streams.


2. Connection: Inspiring moments of surprise –, “I didn’t think of

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