Curation Is King

Watch streams and playthroughs: Ashley Bardhan recently argued that watching a video game isn’t so different from playing it. I agree. This guidance won’t surprise anyone under the age of 30. But many gamers in the millennial demographic (or older) have yet to make a habit of watching streams on Twitch or playthroughs on YouTube. If this is your f

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Digital abundance is a mixed blessing: exhilarating, yet flattening and homogenizing. Culture is converted into “content” that blurs together as it flows through the same conduits and across the same interfaces in an endless stream. As we struggle to keep abreast of the accelerating flow of content, drawn by the perpetual lure of the new, we come t... See more

The difference between schools and libraries

From John Taylor Gatto’s The Underground History of American Education (via Austin Kleon):

To begin with, libraries are usually comfortable, clean, and quiet. They are orderly places where you can actually read instead of just pretending to read.

For some reason libraries are never age-segregated, nor do t

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This theme isn’t just confined to bookstores; it sprawls throughout our urban fabric, notably into the realm of generic coffee shops. Both scenarios – bookshops and coffee shops – underscore a broader trend: our tastes and preferences, once diverse and eclectic, are being molded into a uniform, digitally driven aesthetic.

In this realm, what wins is... See more

Knowing where to go and what to do is the currency that, in the modern aspiration economy, makes curators more important than influencers. They guide their audience through culture by putting forward a selection of images, references, codes, product releases, or memes. Curation gives even mundane objects value by connecting them with a point of vie... See more