Information curation seems to be the Next Big Thing. Of course, information curation is not new by any means.
What is it?
What is “information curation”? Here, we will take it to mean simply collecting, summarizing, and updating bits of information. It can be thought of as a metadata library. We collect and curate information on information. Now libraries have been doing this very thing for thousands of years.
As soon as writing became something people understood they should do, other people started to collect those writings. Before too long, it became obvious that not every bit of parchment, or rock, or hide, that somebody wrote on could be collected. So a decision would need to be made about what should be kept, and what should be rejected. Some boundaries were obvious, such as different languages. If you could not understand a written language, there would be a strong reluctance to collect it into your precious space.
Other boundaries would not be as obvious. Perhaps you would tend to want to collect true, factual bits of information. You would need to vet each new thing to try and figure out if it was true, or if it was perhaps “fake news”. But then what about something like Aesop’s Fables, that are not exactly true events, but do teach valuable lessons. Do they have a place in your collection?
The Internet
With the internet, we could perhaps say that this is a solved problem. We are able to record and keep a nearly infinite amount of information in the internet, and even keep it readily accessible. We are able to efficiently accumulate much more collective knowledge than ever before was possible. In that sense, it is a solved problem. We can be much more liberal with what we choose to keep.
Yet it has opened us up to a new problem. With so much information readily available, how do you choose what to actually consume? What books are good to read? What movies will be enjoyable to watch? Are there any news sources that actually present issues in a balanced way?
Various sites and other models have cropped up to try and help with this problem. Do you remember CliffNotes? More than just a way to help high school kids skip reading a book for a book report, this was a useful way to get an outline of a book, to see if it would be something you would actually want to read. Newer tools such as Blinkist also fit in this category.
Where This is Going
We can also see this curation model showing back up in places like Amazon. Unlike other “markets” like King Soopers or Walmart, which offer a limited brand selection, Amazon offers a large number of options for similar products. This is good for the consumer, but can also lead to a kind of decision paralysis. When too many options are available, it can become harder to choose any one of them. Enter the “Amazon Recommended” badge for certain products.
There are already lists floating around the interwebs about which Youtube or Netflix videos you should be watching this week (similar to the NY Times best seller list for books). There are already “specialty” services for curating videos, such as VidAngel. It would not be surprising if services like this start to really take off, offering a more strictly curated selection of products.
Part of this is because of the decision paralysis mentioned earlier. Netflix itself quickly saw this problem and swiftly implemented a personal recommendation engine to help alleviate it. Others are bound to take this idea to the next level, and probably already have. The other side of the coin is that people sometimes realize that their time is valuable. Watching a TV episode to unwind after work is one thing, but how does one choose what technical book to read to hone one’s Spring Boot skills? There are bound to be specialized services crop up all over the place to offer solutions to this specific problem.