Creation and Curation
Creation and Curation
Have you ever sat down in front of the TV, pulled up Netflix, and just scrolled aimlessly for twenty minutes before deciding to do something else instead? What about sitting down at your computer to look something up on a specific topic, only to realize an hour later you are watching commercials from the ’80s on YouTube? Anyone who has spent time on the Internet has fallen into a rabbit hole, one thing leads to another and before you know it you’ve lost three hours.
The Internet has changed the world so much. One of the biggest things the Internet and technology, in general, has done is that is has broken down the barrier for people to get their creative endeavors out to the world. Giving us the tools to create things that used to be reserved for the rich, and the means that used to be locked behind influential people has changed everything. The unfortunate circumstance, however, is that everyone is taking advantage of it, and there is so much good stuff.
The amount of stuff out there is mind-boggling. People are creating things at such a rate that we could fill a lifetime with what is made in any given five-minute span. With such a massive amount of creation, though, comes a wide array of quality as well. Incredible movies are being made that few people will ever see. At the same time, movies are made with the backing of large studios that will be seen by millions of people and will suck. The trick is sifting through it all and finding the good stuff.
We all want to maximize the use of our time, but it can be hard when there is so much out there vying for our attention. No one has the time to go through all of it to see what's good and what isn’t. To a point, you have to realize there is just no way you will see everything, you have to let part of it go. The way to get the best results, though, is through curation.
Curation is something we all turn to in some ways, whether we realize it or not. There are so many levels that most of it just happens without us realizing that’s what we are doing. A friend recommends a book, you hear about a movie on the radio, things like this filter in, you add a slight priority to them. This is the base level. Next, you find someone, whether you know them or just follow them on the Internet, who you realize has a similar taste as you. This might be a movie critic who always seems to be spot on or a blogger that is consistently leading you to great articles. Curation is finding someone who’s tastes you trust, or that align with yours.
At some point, curation becomes almost as important as creation does. People actually make a living out of this. With newsletters (hi) and link blogs, some people spend their days scrolling over the feeds and finding the good stuff for others. This is what made social media great. You followed the people you trusted on Twitter and Facebook, they posted things you liked. This was a great solution at the beginning of these services, we found the perfect form of curation; show me everything that this person I chose to follow shared. But, as always, we can't have nice things. Slowly our timelines became disjointed and taken over by algorithms.
In some ways, the abundance of creation is what led us to turn over so fully to social media. It was an elegant solution, maybe it started out with the best intentions, but it pulled out the worst aspects of our attention spans. Convenience kicked in like it always does, people no longer do the work to look elsewhere, now this is the only place they get anything from.
I hope maybe we can take a few steps back, realize that while curation is something that has a lot of value, we still need to do some of the work. At the very least, don’t let it all be ruled by the algorithms or those that would use them for breeding more discord. Work on finding those we trusted work to see what they are posting, visiting their sites, reading their newsletters, not just whatever pops up on our social feeds. Every now and then we can spend a little time exploring too, you never know what you will find down those rabbit holes.
An aside about social media;
I have written about my distrust of Facebook before. Still, I truly am scared of the power it yields over our population now. It has pulled attention even further, with people not even reading beyond the shared headlines, they just react without knowing if it is real or not. The number of people who Facebook has become the entire Internet for is crazy to me and is something I hope can be changed.
A Few Random Notes
I have rewritten this a few times now; at some point, I just needed to put it out and get it off my plate so I could move on. It is funny sometimes how things can evolve from where they started. While I was working through this Adi Robertson posted this article on The Verge about finding the truth online. I think it works really well as a companion to my thoughts and everyone should at least look it over.
Also, if you haven’t been watching The Mandalorian, you should be, what’s wrong with you?
If you have any thoughts on curation, or anything else, feel free to let me know. Who knows, maybe we will talk again soon.
Thanks for reading, Mike