Trundle over to Wired. Is the new catchphrase, Age of Curation?

The issue is organising and accessing information. And information includes things like this blog. In the mind boggling array of information on the Internet, how do we find stuff that interests us, people we respect, the (scary word) truth?

Curation might become the word of choice for describing this imposition of order out of chaos.

And then we’ll have to deal with the fact that curation prioritises. And because only a limited amount of stuff (uh, information) can be processed by the human brain in 24 hours, the priotisation will in effect equal the disappearance of stuff. It’ll still exist, but it won’t be seen.

If no one sees a tree fall in the forest, does the tree exist?

Of course lots of stuff currently exists unseen. My presence on the web (like this blog) is barely read. I am a blip in a screen shower of supernovas.

Still, curation. What would you like it to direct your way, and what would you like it to bury?

Friends’ social media presence, news, social commentary, glorious images, poetry, book reviews, humour. How do we decide what we want to see until we see it? But with google so embedded it’s become a verb, are we happy for someone else (algorithms, in fact) to tell us what we want to see?

Curation. It’s an interesting concept. And my old sociology training nudges me hard with Foucault. Knowledge is power, and power is knowledge.