My Quest to Understand Effective Curation (Part I)

Where I Ran Into This Quest

I think it’s safe to say that most people want to matter and be useful to their community — however they define that.

Like many men, this quest eventually led me to the self-development side of the internet. There’s a certain allure, after all. Other men telling you that you can be more and be useful is inspiring, especially for someone who struggles with self-esteem and feelings of inadequacy (guilty).

I went through the standard cast of characters one finds. Slowly absorbing their (sometimes useful, sometimes harmful) lessons. After about 6-months of this binge, I felt like I was reaching saturation.

Then I stumbled upon Andrew Kirby.

Sure, his involvement with the idea of dopamine meant I heard many of the same self-improvement tropes — but then he started to talk about an idea that was new to me. He proposed a way to be useful in the information age was to take on the role of a synthesizer.

To paraphrase his argument, he states that there’s more content than we have the attention and time to consume. Additionally, algorithms are designed to maximize engagement, not knowledge.

These two factors create a state where knowledge is fragmented and will only continue to grow more so. He goes on to state that the solution to the problem people don’t fully realize yet is to become a synthesizer.

At its core, the role consists of three primary actions:

1. Consume content in an area of need/interest
2. Curate, or take the best bits that you’ve found
3. Create media that spreads the best bits you curated in the previous steps

It sounded interesting, but a couple of questions popped into my head. I was curious how you would develop the judgment needed to properly curate and share. Furthermore, I was interested in where this idea has shown up before — after all, most things aren’t new, just remixes.

A New Take on a Historical Task

Photo by Joanna Kosinska on Unsplash

One small rabbit hole later, I found a not-so-surprising answer.

The same general concept has been previously designated, with some amount of fanfare, to curators and curation. Although many people now associate that with museums and artists, that hasn’t always been the case.

A more modern definition of curation, which I found helpful, is:

The selection, organization, and presentation of online content, merchandise, information, etc., typically using professional or expert knowledge

Additionally, as outlined in this (strongly opinionated) article, there were a few distinct definitions of a curator until it took on its more modern definition:

1. Ancient Rome — Supervisors of important public services
2. 14th century — Parish priests
3. 15th century — Caretakers of minors and the mentally ill
4. 17th century — Associated with museums, arts, and libraries
5. 21st century — Expanded to people whose role consisted of filtering and selecting media more broadly

Regardless of the specifics, it has retained the general sense that someone has domain knowledge and filters things out for other people’s benefit.

I also thought of the elders of various communities/villages/tribes. After all, for better and worse, they helped pass down knowledge and traditions — another form of curation.

While the term synthesizer is new, the idea of curation has been around humanity for a long time. This gave me a little more confidence about the viability of the proposed path.

Things About Curation that I’m Going to Try and Understand

My research, while interesting, left me with many more questions than answers. One of the biggest barriers for me that I still need to fully address is how to develop good judgment regarding what you curate.

As recently seen with the Effective Altruism movement and FTX, it’s easy to make an error in judgment that has serious, long-term ramifications.

So, before I proceed in trying to see if this activity is something I enjoy, there are a few questions I need to answer.

1. How can I develop good judgment about a field I don’t yet have much experience with.
2. How can I still add value to the field I’m interested in through curation if I don’t yet have expertise.
3. How can I communicate the ideas and thoughts I come across responsibly.

My Action Plan

In the coming weeks, I’m going to document my journey to try and answer these questions and the results I find. Not only is it practice in the skill, but I hope it’ll be helpful to someone else who has similar questions.

By necessity, the next entries in the series would focus on developing good judgement. Through casual browsing, I’ve identified a handful of sources I am going to consult:

• How to Read a Book
• Noise: An Error in Human Judgement
• Thinking, Fast and Slow
• The Signal and the Noise
• Decisive: How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work
• Andrew Kirby’s Skool Course

What do you think about curation? Is it something that’s useful in your personal or professional life? I’d love to hear what I missed and what you think below!