Diigo Bookmarks 07/17/2008 (a.m.)

Crosscut Seattle – The founder of ArtsJournal talks about arts and new media

Much to think on in this great interview by James Bash with Douglas McLennan, the founder of ArtsJournal. “Curation” is definitely my word du jour — I’ve seen it come up again and again recently, in relation to *very* different products and businesses (clothing & retail, for example).

It leads me to think that “curation” is something that’s evolving out of “filtering,” which in turn was something that sort of / kind of evolved out of (or related to) “gatekeeping.”

The latter always struck me as something almost hateful, in the sense that gatekeepers protected the various walled gardens to which access was limited or even forbidden. Gatekeepers weren’t there for me, they were there for “them.”

Filtering in turn proposed the notion that users (me, we) should set their own parameters — it’s potentially democratic, anyway, provided we don’t let overlords filter for us. DIY filtering can be smart, letting us develop efficiencies in how we access and consume information. But filtering done by censors is bad.

Curation can be equally two-edged (like filtering), but it now introduces another aspect: perhaps trust? Some sort of acknowledgement of expertise, or sophistication? Good curation, however, done on a digital platform, is open, accessible, democratic, and transparent.

Perhaps curation is an open, acknowledged re-insertion of the human aspect — which “filtering” can strive to eliminate via automatic settings and controls.

tags: crosscut, artsjournal, douglas_mclennan, blogging, business, curating, curation, filtering, hyper_local