He starts his argument with describing the context of the curation. The long boom, as he calls it, has brought with itself an inevitable

Michael Bhaskar dedicates the fifth chapter of his book to the principles of the curation. However, you will get disappointed if you’re expecting some clear and straight curation rules.

In fact, for the most part of the chapter, he re-emphasizes (or re-phrases) what he has stated before. The waves of abundance which the new technology has brought with itself and the problem of choosing which gets more complicated every day.

The age of retailers

At the dawn of the industrial era, despite the productivity growth, still, the market was not saturated. So distribution was yet the critical ring if the chain. Retailers popped up everywhere to fill the gap between consumers and the mass producers.

The efficiency and convenience were the most valuable benefits provided by retailers.

The age of curators

The exponential growth of productivity while demand was not increasing fast enough lead to the problem of overchoice, as it is called by the futurist Alvin Toffler.

Here’s where the consumers felt the need for curators to offer them a more restricted choice. The consumers were even ready to pay for their efforts.

Most of the chapter content here is cited from the research of Sheena Iyengar and Barry Schwartz as it’s mentioned in the paradox of choice.

Platforms as curators

Bhaskar notices a third wave in the abundance era: prosumers.

With the rise of social media and digital platforms, it got easier for the consumers to become a producer at the same time. Now with a large number of producers dealing with a large number of consumers in the market, the curation industry has to upgrade itself to the next level: the curation algorithms.

Bhaskar here notes that, although algorithms have reached greats success, still the pure machine curations have not been as successful as expected and it’s better to combine them with human operators to get the best results. At least until they get much better than today.

Related articles:

• Curation: the power of selection in a world of excess
• The context of curation: computation as a GPT
• Curation and the overload problem

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To prove his claim, he has collected a wide variety of data and statistics, some amazing and the others irrelevant, just to take you to the border of impatience when you reach his claim.

Anyway, besides all excessive data provided in the second chapter, the main idea is really important to note: we’re facing a world with so many excessive materials.

Citing James Wallman’s book, ‘Suffocation’,  Bhaskar argues that more than any era in human history, we are eager for getting more without being concerned about having more.

Overload as a good problem

Bhaskar refers to overload as a good problem. By ‘good’ he means that this problem is not a genuine problem, but a problem arisen from our solutions to the scarcity as a more fundamental problem.

However, he emphasizes that having a good problem doesn’t mean that we haven’t any problem. Even good problems can become more fundamental if we leave them unattended:

The acceleration of flows – flows of capital, ideas, data, products, people and media, takes its toll on us as human beings.

The new locus of value

The entire chapter revolves around the new locus of value.

Since the industrial revolution, the largest portion of financial value was generated through increasing the production capacity. But as we have oversupply in many areas now, the locus of value is shifting to curation.

People, companies, and products that help people to filter the world around and pick a few useful items will be the winners of the new era.

Information overload, in Bhaskar’s view, is one of the leading fields with the overload problem. However, the problem is emerged on a global scale and beyond a specific sector.

Related article: The context of the curation

Related article: Curation as the power of selection in a world of excess

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Bhaskar dedicates the second chapter to the context of the curation. He tries to depict the last centuries as a continuous trend of productivity growth in every aspect of the global economy.

He cites various numbers and statistics from the early days of industrial revolution to the present to show the scarcity giving its way to the abundance.

Computation and connectivity as general purpose technologies (GPTs)

The concept of General Purpose Technologies (GPTs) was introduced by Bresnahan and Trajtenberg in 1995-6. They argue that a GPT should have the following characteristics:

• Being pervasive in various sectors
• Being able to improve over time
• Help to foster innovation and making new products and services

Bhaskar believes that technology and connectivity can be considered as a GPT:

Productivity growth has always relied on general purpose technologies like steam and electricity to unlock new waves. There is a good argument that computation and connectivity are  just such a GPT and that we are currently living through its consequences.

Based on the statistics and assumptions he provides, Bhaskar argues that we are not reached to the secular stagnation that was predicted to happen soon.

Data creation and data storage are not the only territories affected by the digital technology

This is on the primary ideas presented in the first chapter of Bhaskar’s book.

Here’s how he emphasizes on this point:

We think of digital technology, among other things, as leading to a huge boost in data storage and data creation.

This is true, but it is far from the only way digital technology has transformed conditions of scarcity into conditions of abundance.

Digital tech has led to vast supply increases and price falls in communications, access to markets, inventory space, content creation and publishing, software, consumer choice, services, and processing power.

In each of these areas the past twenty years have seen the dominant trend switch from scarcity to excess.

This abundance has led to rise of the curation as a field of expertise. And this is the way Bhaskar convinces his readers to follow him thorough his book.

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At first glance, the book may seem rather boring. Michael Bhaskar’s book, ‘Curation’,  starts with reciting trivial facts and statistics on content abundance. He refers to the vast amount of generated data, the number of daily Facebook posts, increased computational capacity, and many other similar well-known points.

But as you go further into the book, it’s a pleasant read.

To be honest, I didn’t experience any wow moment while reading this book. However,  If you are concerned with information abundance and want to think about this topic, your most creative and inspiring times will happen while you are busy reading curation.

I will dedicate a few posts to quoting author’s ideas that are worth mentioning and re-emphasizing.

The Tsunami of data

The tsunami of data is the term Bhaskar uses to describe the current state of the data economy.

In the introduction of his book, he calls the current time as the post-digital era with the following characteristics:

• Information abundance
• Pervasive connectivity
• The blurring of offline and online environments

We are conditioned for creation and growth

This is the second post he emphasizes in the introduction of the book. And the point he refers to many times in his discussions and arguments.

Bhaskar believes that we are evolved and conditioned to create more and more. The age of scarcity and hunger have conditioned us to secure tomorrow by creating more today.

But now, abundance is not a goal anymore. It has become the new challenge. The case is similar to hunger which is now substituted by obesity (at least in many parts of the world).

Here is how he defines curation:

Related articles:

• Curation and its context (the key points of the first chapter of the book)
• Curation and the overload problem
• The principles of curation

The post Curation – The Power of Selection in a World of Excess (Michael Bhaskar) appeared first on webmindset.

This vagueness in the concept has been one of the reasons that last year, Michael Bhaskar published his book titled Curation.

Although many people expect to read about curation tools and technics, he has devoted a major part of his book to the philosophy behind content curation.

Here I have collected some of the most important points of his definition of content curation.

Definition of content curation

In Bhaskar’s words,  curation is where the acts of selecting and arranging add value. .

He also notes some other important aspects of the content curation:

Bhaskar stresses the point that most of the times, the content curator is not an official position in the organizational chart. In fact, it’s more often an emergent property of the organization.

He believes that the curation concept should be considered more seriously as a fundamental value-creating activity in the organizations. Despite the fact that most of the times, there’s not a straight path from the curated content to the financial outcomes.

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