Your new post is loading...
When asked about the worst words of 2013, The Atlantic’s Richard Lawson respondedthat he hated the usage of curation. His objection to the word was that it has shifted far from its original high-art meaning:
"It's a reappropriated term that used to mean something good - putting lovely and interesting things in a museum! - but now denotes a technique of cobbling together preexisting web content and sharing it with readers/followers/whomever. In other words, linking to things.”
And he’s got a point. Social media means we’re all curators now. Anyone who signs up for a Twitter account is curating a stream of links and cat videos for their followers and friends. But personalised curation is a response to the information overblown that the web has created. Social media has given many users a way to make sense of this by looking to trusted curators: their friends....
This is a really thoughtful post about curation and it's meaning in the context of social media. What do you think curators? Should we find a different name and leave curation to the fine arts world? I don't think so. That's like saying we should still be riding horses instead of driving cars.