The Art of Dancing With Systems: A Guide to Content Curation

The Art of Dancing With Systems: A Guide to Content Curation

In today's fast-paced digital world, information is constantly being generated and shared. With so much content available, it can be overwhelming to sift through and find the most relevant and valuable information. That's where content curation comes in. Content curation is the art of finding, organizing, adding value, and publicly sharing digital information artifacts on a specific topic for a particular audience interest.

At its core, content curation involves collecting, contextualizing, and sharing information. It allows individuals to understand, explore, and make sense of a topic by organizing the best information resources about it and providing keen insight and expert guidance into their exploration. The main goal of content curation is to help others discover, learn, and make sense of something they are not familiar with.

One of the key aspects of content curation is exposing your mental models to the open air. Instead of relying solely on your own beliefs or misconceptions, it is important to invite others to challenge your assumptions and add their own. By collecting multiple explanations, hypotheses, and models, you can gain a more comprehensive understanding of a topic. This practice of learning in public not only expands your own knowledge but also encourages collaboration and the exchange of ideas.

Another important aspect of content curation is staying humble and staying a learner. In a world of complex systems, it is crucial to acknowledge that we can never fully understand everything. Our reductionistic science has taught us that the future is unpredictable and that systems cannot be controlled. However, we can design and redesign systems by listening to what they tell us and discovering how their properties and our values can work together to bring forth something better than what could be produced by our will alone.

When curating content, it is essential to focus on what is important, not just what is quantifiable. While it may be tempting to prioritize metrics and numbers, true value lies in the intangible aspects of a system. Tacky, inappropriate, unsustainable, morally degrading, ecologically impoverishing, or humanly demeaning content should not be overlooked. By speaking up for these values and designing systems to produce them, we can ensure their existence.

Flexibility and open-mindedness are also crucial in content curation. Systems are dynamic and self-organizing, and they require us to be adaptable. It is important to be willing to redraw boundaries, notice when a system has shifted into a new mode, and redesign structures accordingly. Good ideas can come from anyone, anywhere, and anytime, so it is important to defy disciplinary boundaries and follow a system wherever it leads.