When it comes to curation, I think there’s good news and bad news.
Curation is “the art of plucking all the good stuff from a superabundance of crap.” (That’s the Cranky definition actor and dilettante media analyst Joseph Gordon-Levitt gave in a recent Esquire magazine interview.)
As a result of explosive growth in the use of self-describing code and the increasingly sophisticated application of metadata, online content is getting smarter every day. As content gets smarter, controlling that content gets not only more difficult, but also less appropriate.
“What size shoe you wear?” a guy asks me over his shoulder as he glides by in the crowded ski shop. “How long you want ‘em for?” a different guy shouts from the far wall by the rental snowboards. “Uh, I’m not sure,” I stammer, “I wanted to …uh …” A third guy steers me over to a counter and tells me to look forward and stand up straight with my feet together.