The Death of Curating, the Rise of Curation

Curation was once something we did for ourselves, a ritual that shaped our taste and gave us joy. I worry that in our rush toward convenience, algorithms, and now AI agents, we’re letting go of that agency piece by piece. Maybe what we need isn’t smarter technology to choose for us, but the space and intention to start curating again — for ourselves, on our own terms.

I’ve been aggressively curating my digital gardens lately.

I used to hit “shuffle all” on my music library and cringe at roughly half of the songs.

Lately, there’ve been consecutive days of listening on shuffle where I don’t skip a single song. And often, I pull up my phone to see who the artist is.

The more I curate, the happier I am.

Cull, weed, curate, clean... all synonyms for the same thing. Do the work, reap the benefits.