why curation...

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

we’ve always been influenced in what we find beautiful or valuable or important, of course, but what’s new is the speed at which one is inundated with things to desire, to value, to find beautiful.

Curation leads to expertise. Through curation, you better understand yourself, history, and unlikely connections across fields. Increasingly, we will curate sources and ideas and let AI handle execution or assembly. Honing an ability to curate and arrange these sources will cultivate depth and meaning in your work—tuning the machine to your specifi... See more

In a long-context world, maybe the organizations that benefit from AI will not be the ones with the most powerful models, but rather the ones with the most artfully curated contexts.

I have thousands of photos of my children but few that I’ve set aside to revisit. I have records of virtually every text I’ve sent since I was in college but no idea how to find the ones that meant something. I spent years blasting my thoughts to millions of people on X and Facebook even as I fell behind on correspondence with dear friends. I have ... See more

It’s clear that curating content within a particular niche can be an incredible way to build an audience and add value. Content curation hooks people in with the promise of learning new skills while saving time, and it keeps them coming back by building a sense of community around a particular subject or vertical.

We need leaders in all aspects of our lives, and human curators should be the arbiters of taste. You may already be sick of trending templates, memes, specific types of click-baity content, soulless imagery, vapid videos, engagement farming, annoying trending songs.9 It’s not going to stop. In fact, it’s going to get much worse. The problem is that... See more

what I’m really mourning here is the death of independent media: opinions that aren’t created as clickbait, hot takes that aren’t manufactured for views, and recommendations that aren’t paid for—ultimately I’m looking for people I can trust.