why curation...

There is a new profession of trail blazers, those who find delight in the task of establishing useful trails through the enormous mass of the common record.

I’ve been thinking about the enduring, perhaps increasing currency of personal recommendations (practically artisanal craft now if you think about it!) as well as the value of connoisseurship and curation in a culture where unthinking automation has left us feeling drowned in a deluge of content.

I suspect that’s the core appeal of all the... See more

You can use algorithms to surface new things. But algorithms are not nearly as good as human curators yet. Whatever pattern matching is going on inside the mind of Werner Herzog when he recommends books and films is yet superior to YouTube’s recommendation engine. Going from Herzog to Kapuściński and from Kapuściński to Mandelstam and Mandelstam to... See more