Creation, consumption, and curation
When we talk about tablets versus traditional PCs, we talk about consumption devices vs. creation devices. But there's a third important activity and that is Curation. In a world of already overwhelming amounts of information and growing exponentially with Big Data, there needs to be ways to separate the wheat from the chaff. Google Search tries to do this algorithmically but even it sometimes presents less than desirable search results.
If you think this isn't a problem, have you ever tried to organize your personal photo collection or try to find a particular photo years after the photo was taken?
With every piece of information we have to think, is this relevant to what I'm working on? If it is, is it the best (or one of the best) items of information?
I used to rely on the local paper (Edmonton Journal) and its editors to bring me relevant stories. Now we rely on search engines, crowd-sourced user reviews but it's up to us to keep our skeptical hat on and have a ballpark understanding of which web sites are trustworthy and reliable. There are a lot of aggregators out there but which ones do any curation at all? Some aggregation sites simply scrape the source site and present the contently slightly differently but ultimately not adding any value.
I think curation is applying expert knowledge about a subject, determining if the article is accurate and adds substance to a typical viewer’s knowledge and opinions.
Nowadays, I can’t just trust the local newspaper or evening news broadcast or government publication. There are just too many other relevant sources. To a large degree, it's up to me to figure out which sources regularly provide accurate information. Fortunately the work of curation can be done easily on a tablet, traditional PC, or smartphone, as long as our discerning mind is in operation.
Steven Rosenbaum has a similar opinion: Why Curation Is Just as Important as Creation
Image is by Flickr user *s@lly*
