AC/E Digital Culture Annual Report E-Book

Robin Good

• Herausgeber: Dosdoce
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 469

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Beschreibung

Acción Cultural Española's fourth edition of the AC/E Digital Culture Annual Report follows an editorial policy of familiarising professionals of the culture sector with the main digital trends they need to be aware of over the coming years. Since 2015, a committee has been advising us on the choice of subjects and authors for the first part of the report. This year, a group of experts analyse issues such as content curation as a means of tackling digital overload, neuroscience applied to technology, the latest advances in artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things and Big Data applied to culture, and the use of digital technology in music. Each year's edition also includes a field study: the Focus, which reports on cases of good practice in digital technology in a specific discipline. The first edition examined the impact of digital in the world of the performing arts; the second focused on museums; and the third on the use of digital devices at fifty Spanish and international culture festivals. This fourth edition surveys in depth the use of digital technology in the conservation, analysis and dissemination of our cultural heritage. This sector is rapidly growing, leading to a radical change in methodologies and formats which the author, David Ruiz Torres, analyses exhaustively.

Leseprobe

Acción Cultural Española’s fourth edition of the AC/E Digital Culture Annual Report follows an editorial policy of familiarising professionals of the culture sector with the main digital trends they need to be aware of over the coming years. Since 2015, a committee has been advising us on the choice of subjects and authors for the first part of the report. This year, a group of experts analyse issues such as content curation as a means of tackling digital overload, neuroscience applied to technology, the latest advances in artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things and Big Data applied to culture, and the use of digital technology in music.

Each year’s edition also includes a field study: the Focus, which reports on cases of good practice in digital technology in a specific discipline. The first edition examined the impact of digital in the world of the performing arts; the second focused on museums; and the third on the use of digital devices at fifty Spanish and international culture festivals. This fourth edition surveys in depth the use of digital technology in the conservation, analysis and dissemination of our cultural heritage. This sector is rapidly growing, leading to a radical change in methodologies and formats which the author, David Ruiz Torres, analyses exhaustively.

Since the publication of the first edition of the Annual Report only a few years ago, we have seen how breakthroughs in the digital sector have now become everyday realities that are present in AC/E’s own exhibition activities, where we have turned to digital technologies to produce educational resources. Together with the Real Academia de Bellas Artes, we have taken part in a virtual reality experience for the exhibition Carlos III y la difusión de la antigüedad (Charles III and the dissemination of antiquity): a six-minute immersion in the archaeological excavations of the ancient cities of Herculaneum and Pompeii produced by the Spanish company Future Lighthouse. It was on show for three months at the Madrid, Naples and Mexico venues, where it was a great success with visitors, and is now available free of charge from the virtual games platform Steam.

To present the results of the Annual Report, we rely on the collaboration and support of the Espacio Fundación Telefonica, which assists us enormously with its dissemination. Throughout the year, we will also present it at various international centres and forums for digital culture. Last year these activities took us to the summit of the International Federation of Arts Councils and Culture Agencies in Malta, the European Commission Working Group on the Promotion of Access to Culture via Digital Means, the MUSAC Encuentro sobre Redes en Museos y Centros de Arte in León and the Meteoriti Breaking Culture forum in Siena.

Our Annual Report is the result of an in-house reflection begun four years ago on how to incorporate the digital dimension into AC/E’s goals and work in support of the culture sector. We want it to reflect the impact advances in technology are having on our society, in order to explore the changes in the culture sector and help its organisations and professionals create experiences that live up to the expectations of twenty-first-century users.

Elvira MarcoDirector generalAcción Cultural Española (AC

Contents

Content Curation in the Digital Age.Curation for Digital Heritage

Robin Good

The music market goes digital. It’s not digital transformation but cultural transformation

Roberto Carreras

Storytelling and cultural diffusion

Eva Snijders

Big Data in the Digital Humanities. New Conversations in the Global Academic Context

Antonio Rojas Castro

The Internet of Things: The Definitive Revolution in Art, Leisure and Culture in the 21st Century

Pedro Diezma

Where Art Meets Neuroscience

Ximo Lizana

Game Design as a Cultural Disseminator

Clara Fernández Vara

The use of digital technologies in the conservation, analysis and dissemination of cultural heritage

David Ruiz Torres

Introduction

1. DOCUMENTATION, DIAGNOSIS AND CONSERVATION

1.1 Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs)

1.2 BIM (Building Information Modelling)

1.3 Metadata management systems

1.4 Digital photogrammetry/3D laser scanning

1.5 RTI (Reflectance Transformation Imaging)

1.6 Robotics and Drones/UAVs

1.7 3D Digital Models

1.8 Augmented reality apps

1.9 Projection mapping

1.10 3D Printing

2. Dissemination, enhancement and education

2.1 Heritage in the digital medium

2.2 The digital medium in heritage sites

2.3 App universe: mobile heritage for dissemination and enhancement

2.4. Wearables: VR and AR smartglasses

2.5 Materialising digital heritage

3. Research

3.1 Data acquisition and 3D digitisation

3.2 Analysis and interpretation

3.3 Computer graphics and 3D environments

3.4 Audience case studies

Conclusions

Bibliography

Content Curation in the Digital Age.Curation for Digital Heritage

Robin Good @RobinGood

Robin Good is an independent author, publisher and speaker focusing on key trends connecting technologies and communication, marketing, design and learning.

Based in the island of Terceira, Azores (Portugal), Robin has published since 2001 over 3,000 articles on communicating effectively with new technologies and the Internet.His work has been read by over 30 million individuals and it has been mentioned in over 100 books. He has also been the first EU-based small independent publisher to have invoiced over a million dollars to Google in 2008 in advertising commissions.

His best work on content curation can be found here:

http://curation.masternewmedia.org

https://flipboard.com/@robingood/content-curation-world-9pgk3c6gy

http://contentcuration.zeef.com/robin.good

https://medium.com/content-curation-official-guide

http://pinterest.com/robingood/content-curation-visualized

https://it.pinterest.com/robingood/great-examples-of-content-curation/

https://it.pinterest.com/robingood/what-is-content-curation-best-definitions/

Introduction

When you live in an age where you are surrounded by information, differing viewpoints, hard to vet and verify sources, fake news and propaganda, content curation moves rapidly from being a trendy buzzword for content marketers to become an in-demand necessity for any human interested in actively learning, comprehending and wanting to make sense of today’s reality.

Content curators act as expert “trusted guides” who help us manage this overwhelming glut of information, while supporting us in making sense of the issues, topics, events and people that interest us most.

“When we curate content online, it enhances who we are... – we learn things, and we help to define ourselves by understanding our own interests – and in a more external way, by allowing other people to better understand who we are. It becomes part of our ethos, part of our personal brand.”

(source: http://sco.lt/7cPrPd)

Dr. Gideon Burton of Brigham Young University offers an interesting insight into why curation is such a valuable activity for humankind by pointing out that our efforts to gather, collect and order the information chaos surrounding us are a critical activity to understand ourselves, to learn more about anything and to make sense of the world we live in.

Real-world examples of such content curation are everywhere around us. They range from music compilations, to video playlists, galleries of images, directories of tools and resources, to hand-picked lists of experts, custom maps, timelines, guides and in-depth news stories.

Culturally, these curated resources are not just shortcuts to the “essence” of something, but they also shape and define the character, the perimeter of who we are, of what we are interested in, what we like, give value to and seek.

For these reasons content curation acts both as a cultural portal to discover who we are as well as a multifaceted lighthouse pointing to whatever our culture deems to be relevant and worth of attention and scrutiny.

Content curation shapes and molds our own culture as it promotes the filtering and highlighting of what is identified as being of greater value and interest by experienced scholars, researchers, and passionate information explorers

In turn, content curation shapes and molds our own culture as it promotes the filtering and highlighting of what is identified as being of greater value and interest by experienced scholars, researchers, and passionate information explorers such as content curators are.

Filtering and the Content Curator

Although one may not realize it, the greatest part of our lives is spent filtering out irrelevant, unimportant or uninteresting signals while paying attention and giving focus to what we feel is important and relevant at any given moment.

Our lives are spent making choices. We are the only animal who can do this: stop and decide what to choose, listen, watch, read, and respond to.

We make choices even when we choose not to make a choice or when we let others do it for us.

And if this is a key trait that makes us different from other living creatures, it would only appear to be logical that we did our best to make valuable, intelligent choices every time we were confronted with one.

In other words, if I took this concept to the extreme I could say that a fully operational human being curates his life, moment by moment, by deciding constantly what to pay attention to, instead of letting habits, traditions, prejudices, fears or others influence and decide it for him.

But what happens when a human being lives in a digital information economy where there are literally billions of alternative routes, products, strategies and ideas to choose from?

We can filter, select and choose effectively only when there are few alternatives and when their key characterizing traits are clearly and easily identifiable.

But we have much greater difficulty in making choices when:

we are not quite competent with the field we are approachingsuddenly the alternatives are tens or hundreds,their characterizing and differentiation traits are not so obvious to us.

In such situations the only effective survival strategy is learning to be skeptical, and to develop an inquisitive mind. One that asks lots of questions and honestly attempts to look at reality from different, sometimes opposing, angles.

Critically analyzing different viewpoints and interpretations of a specific issue is the best way to better understand any problem and to evaluate the best available strategies to resolve it.

But while it is easy and natural for us to do this when we are familiar and competent with the matter at hand, things change a great deal when we want to learn something new, or we approach a field of interest we know little or nothing about.

It is in these situations that we look for and appreciate the contribution from a trusted, expert guide who can provide us with “intellectual binoculars”. Virtual eyes that can see further and deeper into the issue than we can.

We look for someone who is not just a subject-matter expert, but who has also a passion for analyzing, investigating, asking questions and verifying things before drawing conclusions or sharing advice.

The 21st-century content curator is a passionate subject-specific scholar, who enjoys finding, collecting and sharing best resources, news, info or tools on a specific theme while transparently sharing his bias, prejudices, preferences and disclosing his ties.

But we don’t look just for “any” expert. We are attracted more by those experts that we can empathize with. Someone who shares, at least in part, some of our goals, values, ethics and ideals.

Here he is: the 21st-century content curator. A passionate subject-specific scholar, who enjoys finding, collecting and showcasing/sharing best resources, news, info or tools on a specific theme / topic / issue / event while transparently sharing his bias, prejudices, preferences and disclosing his ties.

Not a newspaper or magazine editor, nor an art or museum curator. A content curator is related to these professionals, but only inasmuch as a motorcycle rider is to a Formula 1 pilot or to a cycling champion. They all race, but their skills, training focus, and required abilities are quite different.

A content curator is in fact much more than a simple editor, as many people may think.

If you look close enough, there are some clear differences between the two:

Curation strives to highlight and distill what is most interesting, representative, rare and unique on a specific theme, subject, issueIt does so through the eyes of a subject matter expert, researcher or explorer who puts his name and face on itThe curator adds and illustrates his viewpoint and perspectiveThe curator discloses his bias, prejudices as well as his interests and ties (commercial and otherwise).The curator cites and systematically credits his sourcesThe curated collection/ stream is openly / publicly shared

Editorial selection, on the other hand, can be easily recognized by:

less focusno official signature / authorsources are not cited or creditedauthors are often not subject matter expertsthere is no critical analysisthere is no disclosure of bias, prejudice or commercial ties.

Curation and Culture

Curation and culture are two sides of the same coin. They are deeply connected and rely on each other for survival. One could not exist without the other.

Consider this: if one desires to get a glimpse of a culture, where does one go?

To the top museums preserving and showcasing key records, paintings, writings, and other artefacts defining that culture.

From their utensils, their tools, their cutlery, clothes, ornaments, jewelry, weapons, to their writings, music and paintings, to their food, art and architecture. Physical things, but also the ideas, symbols and beliefs.

“Culture is the characteristics and knowledge of a particular group of people, defined by everything from language, religion, cuisine, social habits, music and arts.”

Source: Livescience

But today, if you think of it, museums are not anymore just those we have come to know in the physical world.

The internet is now full of highly valuable repositories, libraries, catalogs and directories that organize and showcase who we are today. Without having been labelled as museums, these online collections, directories and catalogs act as true extensions of the classical museum and as live digital galleries of who we are, what we do and what we are interested in.

The content that we curate, publish and share online today is a reliable mirror of our culture(s) and of who we are, what we like, think and dream of.

By curating, we are now all actively (at one level or another) re-defining constantly who we are, what we like, want and live for, in a multitude of different ways. And we do so by exploring, vetting, by adding our own viewpoint and commentary and by sharing valuable resources with others on our preferred social media channels.

It is our own act of filtering, of aggregation, of adding value and of sharing (curation) that allows others to discover, make sense and consider options and viewpoints that were until then, outside their awareness.

Think of Pinterest, and its infinite visual collections on just about any topic. Think of Dribbble or Behance. Think of Wikipedia. Think of Twitter and its ongoing stream of filtered suggestions of what to read, watch, listen to. Think of Flipboard, Medium or Scoop.it.

All of these “curatorial” publishing platforms, are filtering engines and public vetrinas of our interests, fears, dreams and desires as a society.

For all of these reasons, in an age where everyone is a curator, a filter for what to look, see, explore and learn about, content curation may have become both a personal and a social (cultural) necessity.

A personal necessity because an increasing number of people needs to pick, select, collect and organize the resources, tools and the techniques most needed to carry out their work. While in the recent past these were few and physical, now that we are in the information age, these have exploded in number and have mostly become intangible, digital entities.

In an age where everyone is a curator, a filter for what to look, see, explore and learn about, content curation may have become both a personal and a social and cultural necessity.

A social (cultural) necessity because by curating our most precious, interesting and rare ideas, resources, tools and visions, we are not just collecting for our own private interests, but we are also helping others discover, learn, comprehend and make new ideas and perspectives part of their own, while preserving the path and signposts that led us there.

Content Curators as Trusted Guides

According toSmith-Maguire and Matthews, content curators today act as “cultural intermediaries”, helping the layman discover, learn about and appreciate great authors, books, films and ideas he would have never met otherwise.

“[Cultural intermediaries] ... construct value, by framing how others (end consumers, as well as other market actors including other cultural intermediaries) engage with goods, affecting and effecting others’ orientations towards those goods as legitimate – with ‘goods’ understood to include material products as well as services, ideas and behaviours.”

In this light, those who take care of selecting, organizing and making sense of resources (information artefacts), become natural “trusted guides” for anyone interested in learning more about a topic.

Just as when confronted by an unfamiliar jungle or the exploration of a new territory, when we are surrounded by an ocean of information of which we know and understand only a very small part, having good sherpas and expert guides become indispensable.

When we explore new grounds, when we are in doubt or we are trying to grasp and understand a new subject we do not know too well, we have learned to seek the help of someone who has more experience than us, but with whom we share some strong affinities (ideals, enemies, life values, ethics, etc.): these people are now known and referred to as trusted guides.

But who are they? How can they be recognized?

Trusted guides may include friends, family, experts in our network of connections, as well as people we follow on social media and with whom we share common interests, as well as life ideals, principles and ethics.

Trusted guides are individuals who possess specific know-how, expertise and ability to evaluate and judge, and who continuously search, verify, vet, collect and organize the most relevant news, stories, resources and tools on a specific topic, while contextualizing and commenting on them publicly.

In the age of exploding “fake news” such trusted experts can save a lot of time, avoid unnecessary risks, while providing access to more ideas and viewpoints outside our typical horizons.

As a matter of fact, content curators as “trusted guides” are gradually replacing appointed officials, big celebrities, TV hosts, brand experts and other influencers who, for decades, have been advising mass media audiences on what to look at, read, watch, wear, eat and pay attention to.

These traditionally beloved and highly trusted sources of influence and advice have rapidly lost their appeal and their trustworthiness.

Why?

Because we have discovered that, often, they are not trustworthy.

They advise, promote, suggest and report news and stories because they have a “personal” (often “economic”) interest in the matter at hand.

Thus, albeit a bit late, we have come to realize that many institutional and commercial communications were and are still driven by specific political or economic interests, by propaganda goals or by hidden agendas.

Content curators as “trusted guides” are gradually replacing appointed officials, big celebrities, TV hosts, brand experts and other influencers who, for decades, have been advising mass media audiences on what to look at, read, watch, wear, eat and pay attention to.

That’s how, as more and more people have realized that “brands”, “celebrities” and “institutions” were not honest and transparent about what they publicly said, these same people have started to turn to friends and to direct personal, trustable contacts for news, advice, and for keeping themselves updated.

Trusted guides are immediately recognizable individuals who have become known because of their ability to publicly and freely share insightful, competent and independent reviews, analysis, recommendations and advice while being upfront about their true interest, partnerships and ties.

Source: Edelman Trust Barometer 2015

Most of them are content curators. Subject-matter experts who can act as competent guides in suggesting relevant resources, readings and authors to further explore the matter at hand.

Content curators analyze, vet and check tons of potentially relevant information, content, resources and tools, looking for those rare pearls of wisdom that can be found only after a dedicated and sustained search effort.

Content curators showcase publicly these resources, often within dedicated channels, blogs, podcasts, news streams or into growing collections while adding additional context, reference information (authors, sources) and related resources (where to find out and where to go to explore for more).

Not just that.

Curators' key added value is their personal assessment, viewpoint and insight into what they pick, select and showcase.

What is in that information artefact they share that has gotten their attention and interest? What is the value that they see in it? To what else do they see a connection with?By adding their own viewpoint and disclosing their prejudices, bias and interests, curators provide a much more credible profile for themselves in sharp contrast with the “designed”, detached and highly-polished communication approach used by most companies, professionals, and by the traditional media expert.

Content curators advice is also recognizable and clearly distinguishable from the officially appointed expert approach because it is either voluntary and unpaid or compensated directly by those who need to be informed rather than from those who want to sell something.

Curation Cultural Value

The key contribution that content curation provides to our own culture is its role as a discovery and sense-making engine for any art, interest or science.

Take music for example.

If you consider that today just by themselves Spotify and Apple Music offer more than 30 million songs and that there are many more music distribution services like Rhapsody, SoundCloud or Deezer, you can start to realize how difficult it becomes to find the music you like, if you do not know who makes it.

“Like music supervisors in film and TV, curators are now industry gatekeepers, approached with reverence. These invisible influencers can break an artist through a choice playlist placement.”

(source: The Observer)

With an estimated one fifth of all music streams occurring on curated playlists (source: Forbes) music curators are now very valuable assets at Apple Music, Pandora and Spotify as audiences prefer the value of a human selection over an algorithmic one, while a small army of grassroots music fans does a very similar job on popular platforms like Soundcloud, Blip and 8tracks by curating unique playlists and compilations, without asking for anything in return.

By adding their own viewpoint and disclosing their prejudices, bias and interests, curators provide a much more credible profile for themselves in sharp contrast with the “designed”, detached and highly-polished communication approach.

How would you be able to discover and learn about new songs and bands, in such an exploding ocean of music, if it weren’t for music curators online or club DJs searching and listening to thousands of tracks? How would you learn about the history of many artists if it weren’t for radio DJs who provide you with context, history, anecdotes and event information about your favorite artists?

The music curation trend exploded first in the 70’s and 80’s with user-created cassette mixtapes, and then evolved in the mid-‘90s, with innovative DJs and music producers, like Jose Padilla, who started to produce successful commercial curated music compilations that brought together well-known artists with unknown, emergent ones under a common theme or style (think of Cafe del Mar or Buddha Bar CD series and their success over the years).

Many new record labels have then followed, all specializing in well-defined musical genres and driven by the idea to curate and bring together the best of a specific music style.

Lots of private radio stations do the same. They curate the music of our time.

But consider also the specialty, privately-owned bookstore (CityLights in San Francisco) that focuses on your favorite genre and authors, or the online vinyl record store which helps you find old rare gems that cannot be found anymore (MusicStack). They both collect and curate, making it easier for the layman to discover, appreciate and learn about music he would have never otherwise have come across.

Take Wikipedia. It may not be the most reliable information resource for some topics, but it is hard to deny that this is a great example of collaborative, crowdsourced content curation that many of us have successfully browsed, consulted and referred to.

Consider big international events like TED, LeWeb, SXSW, as well as small, locally organized ones, where event curators, talent scouts and subject-matter experts laboriously find individuals that have great ideas and stories to tell, and bring them together to share and present them publicly.

Look at the work of online curators like Maria Popova (BrainPickings) or Dave Pell (NextDraft) and at how they stimulate our interest and curiosity by uncovering great insights and stories from authors and books of all kinds as well as from the news of the day.

Take independent organizations like TrendHunter or Trendwatching who study and analyze the ocean of data generated by consumers to extrapolate, anticipate and predict what the key changes and innovations around the corner will be.

Consider all e-commerce and online shopping activities. According to a recent Pew Research Center survey of U.S. adults, when it comes to buying online, more than seven-in-ten get advice from people they know (77%), or consider it very important to be able to read reviews posted online by others who have purchased the item (74%).

All of these examples show how the trend-makers, those who suggest and advise where to look and what to pay attention to, have moved away from being top appointed officials, celebrities and spokepersons as occurred in the mass media age.

Now, individual curators are our new trusted guides to discovery, insight and knowledge.

It will surprise us in the years to come to see the impact of content curation on many aspects of our lives such as education, news and journalism, entertainment, marketing, design, ecommerce, art and, last but not least, online searching.

The Future

As a consequence of these changes, what may indeed surprise us in the years to come, is not so much the relevance and critically important role that content curation will play in many of our activities, but the impact it will have on many aspects of our lives such as education, news and journalism, entertainment, marketing, design, ecommerce, art and, last but not least, online searching.

Let’s look at some of these in detail.

News and Journalism

Thanks to content curation, in the near future curated news hubs will bring together the top stories for any industry saving you the time that it would take to visit way too many sites and helping you discover new sources, sites and blogs which you did not know.

To get a glimpse of this future, take a look at Techmeme, Memeorandum, Mediagazer as well as HackerNews and AllTop. All of these curated news hubs aggregate and bring together in one place the top stories and news on specific topics.

A renaissance of “niche” email newsletters will curate specific industry verticals by collecting, summarizing and publishing all of the most relevant news for specific industry verticals. An early successful example of this trend is Smartbrief, a company that publishes hundreds of curated newsletters, each one focusing on a specific industry, from aeronautics to pharmaceuticals. Each newsletter picks, selects, and adds commentary and opinion to the most relevant news of the day in his specific market niche.

Similarly, the newest kid on the block, Inside, is also positioned to become a one-stop-shop for niche email newsletter curating the most relevant news and stories in a myriad of other verticals. In general, we may see a growing trend of new journalism moving from news as an entertainment and light-information source, to news as a service, made up of specialized streams of highly organized and vetted information, subjectively curated by dedicated teams of experts.

Curation may also bring to the surface a more critical and analytical approach to being informed, as well as an appreciation for first-person, subjective reporting where we can see events and stories through the eyes and perspective of a specific individual (who is open and transparent about his bias and prejudices).

Curation may also bring to the surface a more critical and analytical approach to being informed, as well as an appreciation for first-person, subjective reporting where we can see events and stories through the eyes and perspective of a specific individual.

In the near future it is possible that we will strive less to get absolute objectivity, as curation makes us realize that this is not a 100% tenable position. Reality can be looked at from different viewpoints, and it is now up to us to pick and select through which “glasses” we want to look at it.

Education and Learning

The whole educational universe is being completely revolutionized by curational practices.

Personalized, custom learning paths will replace traditional standardized curricula as the number of available online courses explodes. Subject-matter experts will curate them by bringing together the best online classes from the most diverse set of universities and colleges. Coursera, Springboard, and smaller companies like CourseBuffet or eLearnHero are already paving this way, while adding profitable complementary services like personal mentoring and certification.

New tools, like Peak, allow smaller schools to aggregate content from multiple sources like the Khan Academy, YouTube Education, Britannica School, and many more and to create custom courses and classes tailored to specific needs.

Content curation starts being used as a better and more effective approach to let students discover and fully immerse themselves in any topic to be learned. By using a curatorial approach in a learning environment students are prompted to do so by actively exploring and critically investigating the matter to be learned, rather than by simply memorizing its related facts.

Curated textbooks will replace their traditional academic counterparts, by bringing together in a highly customizable fashion the best and most relevant information already available in existing articles, research papers, essays and textbooks. (McGraw-Hill Create, Panopen, Boundless)

Teachers, professors and parents will take personal responsibility to find, test and evaluate new tools and resources in a public, collaborative, crowdsourced fashion. (EdShelf)

Subject-matter experts who curate specific topics, issues and themes will become the new educators / facilitators / guides as traditional teachers and professors rapidly evolve into “curators” or risk losing a good chunk of their appeal, credibility and trust.

As a consequence the role of the teacher / professor is gradually being transformed into one of an expert guide, go-to-person, museum guide, who can suggest and advise on where and how to look to find out more about a specific issue, problem, or topic. (Springshare LibGuides)

The Arts

As museum and art galleries fully digitize themselves, the opportunities to create additional value by curating, not just what is in the collection, but also what is related to it but outside of it, will literally explode (see The Open-Source Museum).

Art will disenfranchise itself from having to depend on monolithic interpretations and views as it will become possible for multiple experts to contribute their views and interpretation to any art collection (The Met Connections).

Better still, art lovers and connoisseurs will be, for the first time in history, empowered to create and showcase their own art collections without needing to own any of the actual pieces. They will also be able to contribute, comment on, annotate and curate personal collections, thematic showcases and galleries of their own creation and choosing (Google Open Gallery, Pictify, Kapsul).

Art lovers and connoisseurs will be, for the first time in history, empowered to create and showcase their own art collections without needing to own any of the actual pieces.

The curated collections of the near future, which will be accessible in a digital format, will remain available forever (no need to take them down to give space to another exhibition), and will offer the opportunity to be frequently updated and expanded, while preserving a complete and thorough history of all the changes, modifications and additions made to it (see Google Street Art).

Digital art collections (aided by virtual/augmented reality) will make physical-only, static collections a thing of the past.

Films

The world of films will also greatly benefit from curation activities and in particular it will see an explosion of discovery tools that will make it much easier to find and re-discover movies, films and documentaries that have never made it to the commercial movie-theater circuit or to television.

Here are a few early examples:

Omive – find instantly any movie by genre, rating, votes, runtime, year, keywords, directors and actors.Tastekid – recommends similar music (musicians, bands), movies, TV shows, books, authors and games, based on what you like.MovieMap – visual movies search engine helps you discover similar movies you may like.IsNotTV – movie discovery platform leveraging user contibutions, reviews and “trusted guides”.SuggestMovie – custom movie search engine helps to filter and find whatever type of film you may be looking for.

Curated resources like the Criterion Collection, a curated film boutique that digitally remasters and sells access to classic authors’ films, while bundling with each movie, unique and rare interviews, clips, unpublished/censored scenes, backstage images and other relevant materials (that would be otherwise next to impossible to find) will also prosper.

There will be plenty of independent curated hubs dedicated to collect and organize the best films of a particular genre, author, epoch. Specialization and depth, rather than breadth and general info will again be the characterizing traits of these new curated outlets.

Their existence will make it so much easier to discover and appreciate thousands of great films that otherwise had no hope of being ever found.Look at:

FilmsforAction – a curated collection of films about activism and social change.

Also of interest is the fast growing number of free websites that collect and organize all of the great documentaries freely accessible online. Here some great examples:

TopDocumentaryFilmsRocumentariesDocumentaryAddictDocumentaryHeavenDocumentaryStormJohnLocker

The film curators behind these new catalogs will be our trusted guides in finding and selecting the best movie to watch, rather than having us check tons of trailers or skimpy reviews by film critics we know little or nothing about.

Photography

In the field of photography new tools and services will span a renaissance of visual showcases, catalogs and collections that will bring together the best imagery, ideas and emerging concepts.

Thanks to dedicated image curation platforms like Behance, Dribbble, 500px, Flickr it will be increasingly easy to get infinite visual inspiration and ideas as well as to find great photographers and visual artists for any type of project or endeavour.

New, revolutionary free curated platforms, like Unsplash will allow top-notch visual imagery and totally unknown photographers to be found and appreciated as never possible before.

Pinterest itself will continue to be a reference tool both for discovery as well as for the creation of new valuable image collections.

Even online stock photo agencies will start to deeply curate their own image libraries, as the key differentiator among them will not be just volume anymore, but also image quality and originality, the ever more important ease-of-finding.

e-Commerce

When the inventory becomes near-infinite, as in the case with Amazon, eBay and other large online retailers, then curation becomes a necessity.

Buyers do not like to be overwhelmed with choices and alternatives. Rather, they like and appreciate independent expert advice, commentary, opinions, buying stats, ratings and user-driven top picks, selections and suggested bundles.

Thus, to curate, big retailers will need to work hard to best organize products in well defined categories, to collect and add precise info and data, while adding key value by letting buyers share reviews, comments and opinions in a crowdsourced fashion.

The consequence is that next to algorithmically-based lists and suggestions, we will rely more and more on users' suggestions, comments and recommendations.

A growing set of dedicated tools and services is already available for anyone wanting to take a lead on this front.

For example, Polyvore makes it easy to find and bring together fashion items into small beautiful showcases curated by individuals.

Other interesting examples of services that leverage curation to help consumers find their ideal products are:

Styloko – Aggregates products from top brands and lets you save and collect your favorite ones. Instantly find similar items to the ones you like.Nuji – Editors’ collections provide ideas and inspiration for what to wear on different occasions while hundreds of detailed categories help buyers easily find what they want.Chicissimo – Makes it easy for fashion buyers to showcase their favorite outfits and looks.

Overall, it may be quite likely that curated collections, user recommendations and crowdsourced curation will give a powerful boost to online shopping as product catalogs grow to huge dimensions and even search results do not provide a useful enough filter to identify relevant stuff.

Entertainment (music, films, TV shows, video, etc.)

No matter whether you are looking at music, films, TV shows, radio or podcasts, the content offerings are so vast and diversified that the real challenge for the normal person, overwhelmed by the sheer amount of options available, is what content to pay attention to and where/how to find it without losing a ton of time.

Thus just as Apple Music, Pandora and Spotify have started to heavily invest in human curators to create great playlists and compilations that their audiences can identify with, the same has started to take place with entertainment providers like Netflix, which publishes lists, categories and recommendations to facilitate content finding.

No matter whether you are looking at music, films, TV shows, radio or podcasts, the content offerings are so vast and diversified that the real challenge is what content to pay attention to and where to find it without losing a ton of time.

A fast growing number of tools helps anyone interested in finding video content to explore selected themes and topics across the many video outlets available online.

One good example is Pluto.tv, which gathers and curates over 80 TV channels in 11 categories from news to sport, comedy and entertainment. It also offers 50 different thematic channels that bring together and on-demand the best of what is available.

On Youtube, it has become harder and harder to find the many gems and quality videos available on the platform, but that’s where internal video curators and public playlists are going to make a difference.

As a consequence Youtube playlists will also gain much value, both for those who will be included in them, as well as for those who will curate them.

Literacy

The practice of content curation by individuals or by formal publishers forces those curating to pay extra attention to the matter at hand. Specifically, it forces them to double vet it, verify it and compare it with other sources and opinions.

Content curation and its use forces those doing it to be “critical”. That is, it obliges whoever is doing it not to take any information, no matter what the source, at face value, but to critically analyze it, question it and verify it against different alternative sources.

Take for example the “fake news” phenomenon every newspaper, magazine, radio and TV station has been recently talking about. The practice has been there for the longest time, but it is only now that it has gotten so much media attention.

Fake news is everywhere, and major mainstream publishers and brands are frequently the ones guilty of publishing it.

Unfortunately, the best way to counter such a phenomenon may not be by certifying and officially labelling who is trustworthy and who is not (as this may have very more risky consequences on our ability to discern truth from fraud), but rather by learning, at the individual level, how to check, vet and verify any story, news, article or tweet.

The task at hand is not to mark unreliable authors and websites, but to learn how to tell that a news story, report or article is not trustworthy. No matter who has published it. Sidestepping it, by taking any mainstream news as reliable by default, simply because it has been published by a “trusted” or “well known” brand, will not cut it anymore.

Search engines will increasingly be gateways to curators and content collections rather than to individual tracks and pages. This will be particularly true especially when you query a topic, a theme or interest, or better still, a musical genre.

The task at hand is to preserve, mark, organize, highlight, comment on and share all of the great, valuable content that we find out there. Not to ostracize or censor. History has already taught us that what may appear heretical and impossible today can easily become a shared reality for everyone in very little time.

This is what content curation will bring to us in the near future: a much more responsible approach to finding and reading online information, based on the awareness that ALL content must be checked, vetted and verified.

Online Search

Search engines will increasingly be gateways to curators and content collections rather than to individual tracks and pages.

This will be particularly true especially when you query a topic, a theme or interest, or better still, a musical genre.

In all of these situations, where you want to dive in, discover and learn more about a topic, it is much better to be offered a selection of playlists, compilations, collections or hubs, compiled by well-profiled experts, covering that theme rather than a specific song, product or artist.

Search and discoverability of content will rely more and more on intermediaries that will take on the burden of making sense and organizing in the best possible way a specific realm of information (it can be a music genre, or the analysis of a biological topic) rather than – as happens today – provide a linear list of individual web pages matching that request.

Although it may seem impossible today, individual users and organizations will challenge Google's monopoly on search, not with more servers, faster lines or less advertising intrusions, but by providing better, more comprehensive and expert-vetted results in a growing number of very specific interest areas.

The key characterizing traits of these new search alternatives are both their focus and their not-exclusively-algorithmic, human DNA.

By placing all of their resources and attention on a very small and well-defined area, and by leveraging the know-how and experience of multiple subject-matter experts, these new search engines will be orders of magnitude better than Google at finding relevant information in specific knowledge areas.

Early examples of this are Nomadlist, who collects, vets and curates best cities and places to live around the world for digital nomads, Oldversion which not only collects and organizes, but also physically preserves all of the released versions of free software tools (making it a snap to find and switch back to any past versions of Skype or iTunes).

Both of these are not just evolved vertical search engines with many custom, dedicated filters, but they also act as full-blown directories where each result brings in or aggregates a plethora of relevant complementary info. Nothing like what Google offers.

What is being done to preserve curated content for the long-term future? Unfortunately, very little or nothing is being done on this front. Though there are specific initiatives and organizations devoted to this.

The same vertical search approach is also the one used for example by Stylig and Stylight (fashion, clothes, shoes and accessories) which facilitate discovery across brands by curating and bringing together in one place the newest and most interesting fashion products available online.

In the near future, it may also be possible that individuals will be able to tweak and customize search algorithms themselves, choosing and applying their preferred filters, sources and ratings, while collaboratively curating and annotating highly focussed search results instead of relying exclusively on Google proprietary, secret ones. Zakta Research is an early example in this direction.

Cultural Heritage and Preservation

Although there is widespread agreement that the loss of the Library of Alexandria marked a very dark moment for the cultural heritage of this planet, we do not seem much concerned today about the fact (and not simply the probability) that a very significant part of our digital content will be forever lost in a few years from now.

Consider this for example: An estimated 44 percent of Web sites that existed in 1998 vanished without a trace within just one year (WashingtonPost).

Given all the good things that our culture derives from curating content, and the awareness of the flimsiness of digital content and the ease with which it can get lost, what is being done to preserve curated content for the long-term future?

Unfortunately, very little or nothing is being done on this front. Though there are specific initiatives and organizations devoted to this, like national libraries such as the British Library, the U.S. Library of Congress and the Internet Archive, they are yet very distant from having the resources and technology to be able to preserve all that is relevant.

And one key reason why they are not yet capable of preserving all that is of relevance is that there is no one suggesting where the good stuff is.

As a matter of fact, while we take for granted that anything saved or published online is there to stay forever, we have ample proof that this is not the case at all, and that we gradually lose a great chunk of the information artefacts we create, publish and share online.

In a recent study looking at academic references, Zittrain, et al. (2013) discovered that over 70 percent of all web links inside academic publications had gone broken. The same thing had happened to 50 percent of U.S. Supreme Court opinions. After six years, nearly fifty per cent of the URLs cited in those publications no longer worked.

In another study conducted in 2014 at the Harvard Law School it was reported that “more than 70% of the URLs within the Harvard Law Review and other journals, and 50% of the URLs within United States Supreme Court opinions, do not link to the originally cited information.” (source)

Content disappears for many reasons: much is moved to different online addresses and becomes difficult to find, some is censored, taken down for copyright or legal reasons, some goes down because the author / publisher does not properly maintain his website. Some is lost to malicious attacks, some of it goes offline because there are no economic resources to maintain it.

Furthermore the evolution and changes to file and hardware formats and standards makes it all the more difficult to access, read files and documents that are only 20 to 30 years old (think for example of 5 ¼ floppy disks, or about the tons of one inch analog videotape used in television studios until the 80s). How can you read and access all of that stuff unless you digitize it?

Although you may never heard about it, this phenomenon is so big and pervasive that an official name has been given to it: Linkrot. It signifies the rotting of web links that go bad due to one or more of the reasons listed above.

Linkrot impact is not marginal as different studies and research reports indicate that it can account for up to 30% or more of all the documents published online.

In addition to this, nobody has any certainty about the future of the content sharing platforms where we publish and share much of our content. We don’t know whether they will remain alive, independent or whether they will restrict or charge for accessing content, be bought, closed down, or be controlled by larger entities or even by governments.

From this viewpoint, our cultural heritage rests on very shaky pillars, as we let the digital backup strategy and infrastructure put in place by these social media sharing and content curation platforms dictate the future lifetime of much of our cultural heritage.

Linkrot is the rotting of web links that go bad. Its impact is not marginal as different studies and research reports indicate that it can account for up to 30% or more of all the documents published online.

While the companies we use to collect, publish and curate information today do have interests in making sure none of their data will ever be lost, they do not seem to be driven by humanistic ideals, but rather by what Wall Street and their stakeholders dictate.

More than anything, these companies are not even aware of holding such great cultural responsibility, and therefore they are obviously not worrying about it.

In such a situation, how much trust can we place in them as reliable gatekeepers of our cultural heritage?

Given the not so remote possibility of a future cataclysmic event, capable of wiping out most of our present-day civilization and technology, there is little hope that whatever survives through it could be accessed and read by future generations or by intelligent beings from other galaxies.

But this is where we should put more of our energies, research and attention.

Here are some alternative routes of action that could be taken to help preserve our cultural heritage:

increase public awareness of the flimsiness of digital content, and the need to continue to improve technology and tools specifically designed to help us preserve it for the longest time.increase public appreciation for the value of preserving our cultural heritage, of its importance, value and of the consequences of when it gets lost forever.support and incentivize both government and individual-born activities that strive to collect, organize, and preserve information artefacts of significant value for society. Empower many more organizations and individuals into this art of finding, vetting, organizing and adding value to information artefacts.create and maintain multiple, redundant indexes for all of the updated collections available out there. A directory of culturally-relevant curated directories, so to speak. Such a curated collection of collections should be completely distributed, and not secured in one single place, easily replicable from device to device, continuously updated (but with a full record track of all the changes made to it.

Technology solutions that would help in this direction would be those that could enable:

cloning and replication of vast amounts of data locally,online access via our own distributed resources even when there was no Internet (by utilizing our own friends network), anda way to physically store and preserve such valuable content for very long periods of time and in harsh or extreme climate conditions. (Crystals and holographic memory may be some of the solutions we may consider soon.)accessibility to this archived information by future generations of computers and intelligent machines.

A number of services and tools are already emerging to address some of the basic issues connected to linkrot. Among these are:

Archive – a personal version of the Internet Archive – Wayback Machine, allowing anyone to permanently archive any public web page.Perma.cc and Permamarks.net are two commercial services specifically devoted to create a permanent copy of any page or document, so that it can be referenced without fear that the original will be moved, deleted, censored or taken down.

The key issue with these services is that most do not seem to be exempt from the key variable that makes them all as vulnerable as any other publishing or social media service online: business permanence (their ability to remain alive as a business in the future, and their ability to find ways to permanently store such data on physical supports that can be accessed and used even without the Internet) .

Conclusion

Culture is the cumulative expression of what we see, do, believe in and of what we express through our daily activities, whether commercial, creative or spiritual.

Content curation collects, organizes and preserves the best and most interesting artefacts of our culture, no matter whether these are news stories, paintings, digital videos, 3D panoramas or stories and interviews of people in the street.

As such curation, is “the” best instrument to hold, preserve and let others discover what our, or any other specific culture, is all about. It allows us to transmit the value of our culture to others across time.

Today, content curators are all around us and help society identify and discover what is relevant, interesting, innovative, rare, by actively separating the wheat from the chaff.

And as traditional brands and institutional spokespersons lose their trustworthiness, content curators replace them by becoming our new trusted guides.

By continuously selecting, archiving and presenting the best resources and information available, content curators define who we are, and the perimeter and depth of our interests.

Curation is the live, updating museum of our culture.

To support it we must find and devise more effective ways to preserve the digital collections we publish and share online.

If the Internet is ever censored, goes down or it is blocked by unforeseeable events that we cannot anticipate now, we should not let our culture disappear in a few milliseconds. We need to be able to find out how to preserve this content safely and for the long haul.

This is our challenge for the future.

Bibliography

Curation

by Joyce Kasman Valenza (2016)

Lists Are the New Search

By Benedict Evans (2016)

Content Curation Official Guideby Robin Good (2016)

Students Curating: Powerful LearningBy Nancy White, TechLearning (2014)

Why Curation Revolutionizes Education and Learning

By Robin Good (2016)

Can the Internet Be Archived?by Jill Lepore, New Yorker (2015)

The Internet Dark AgesBy Arienne Lafrance, The Atlantic (2015)

Learning from Failure the Case of the Disappearing Web Siteby Francine Barone, David Zeitlyn and Viktor Mayer Schoenberger (2015)

Saving Our Digital Heritageby Jim Barksdale and Francine Berman, Washington Post (2007)

J. Zittrain, K. Albert and L. Lessig, 2013. “Perma: Scoping and addressing the problem of link and reference rot in legal citations,” Harvard Public Law Working Paper, number 13–42, at http://papers.ssrn.com/abstract=2329161, accessed 24 February 2014; http://perma.cc/4DVN-DYS8; also in Harvard Law Review, volume 127, number 4 (2014), at http://harvardlawreview.org/2014/03/perma-scoping-and-addressing-the-problem-of-link-and-reference-rot-in-legal-citations/.

Content Curation Tools

Hypothes.is– Open platform for annotating, highlighting and collaboratively curating the entire web.

Flipboard – News discovery and content publishing platform allows you to curate vertical magazines on specific topics with minimal effort and at zero cost.

Scoop.it – Content marketing and curation platform allows you to search and find niche content and then to edit and curate it for inclusion in thematic journals, websites, blogs, online magazies.

Pinterest – Visual collection, discovery and gathering platform allows you to create boards of info items that can be introduced and commented by the curator.

Microsoft Stream – Video curation platform for organizations for internal use as distribution vehicle for training and HR materials, product information or customer assistance resources.

Diigo – Bookmarking and research support service makes it easy to save and archive any web page “as is”, as well to categorize it, tag it and annotate it.

ZEEF – Listing service allows you to collaboratively curate directories of resources, tools and articles on specific subjects.

AndersPink – Content discovery platform facilitates finding, aggregating and filtering content feeds (RSS) on any topic.

Zakta Research – Research engine leveraging visualization, collaboration and curation to optimize content discovery.

Trusted Guides (content curators) in specific interest areas

(*original tweeters to follow)

Julian Stodd (Social Leadership)

Harold Jarche (Knowledge Management)

Maria Popova (Culture)

Howard Rheingold (Digital Literacy, crap detection)

Kevin Kelly (Future, Tools)

Alfonso Furtado (Publishing)

Sepp Hasslberger (Health, New Energy, Economy, P2P)

David Kelly (Learning)

Joyce Valenza (Education)

Robert Scoble (New Tech)

Michel Bauwens (P2P)

Rohit Barghava (Influence and Trends)

The music market goes digital. It’s not digital transformation but cultural transformation

Roberto Carreras @RobertoCarreras