Signal: The Age of Collectors
Content creators are like locusts. Or maybe dandelions; SARS-CoV-2 mutations…
There are a lot of them. Everywhere. There are economies set about to support (and demand) constant output.
Need proof? Myself. Presently. A locust, creating content.
But.
Sometimes I get overwhelmed with it all. Is there too much? As useful as it can be from a data science perspective, what is too much? Too many opinions on too many slight-variations-on-the-same topic? Too many screaming into the abyss, just as I am right now?
Sometimes I need less.
Less of everything.
So, I started asking myself about less. Less is the opposite of more. Less seems nice.
How could less look? What’s the ‘why’ of less? Then, in turn: If content creation is more, what is the opposite of a content creator? Could this opposing force be signalling the future of the content creation industry?
Let’s explore…
Creator
To understand, we must first define.
One who makes new. Invents new. Births. Generates. Makes. Consistently. Consistent creation. Like being a woman who is pregnant-almost-constantly for 20 years? Scheduled. Pictures, videos, streams, lessons on which pants to put with which shirt to put with which frilly socks.
Did people once feel the same way about books? I remember my grandmother saying to me, “Everyone’s an author.” as if the last thing we needed was another book in the world. How dare we author a book?
But Everyone wasn’t an author. My neighbour wasn’t. My swimming coach wasn’t. (Pauses to think.) My technology teacher was.
More. To keep up, right? Making for the sake of making. Generation for the sake of generation? More for the sake of more [significance]? Like what? Like Eris? Like Cancer?
Then, now… the opposite.
Eliminator, Destroyer, or Other?
Word cloud time: Remover. Dismantler. Delete-r. Destroyer? One who removes by way of destruction? Perhaps absorption. Sponge? Vacuum. Roomba®. Okay, now we are distracted… Back to the root of the question. The opposite of creation-making-new. A balancing factor.
Perhaps one who does not create, nor destroy. Perhaps one who utilizes what has already been created. Repurposing with the intent of repurposing. A cleaning crew to sweep up, sort, and recycle into rainbow-colored rectangular vessels. Finding the dots and connecting them.
Curating the more of the internet to make it more useful.
Word cloud, v.2. (new): Archivers. Librarians. Data Analysts. Repository builders. Collectors. Cataloguers. More novel than creation, I’d say, given how we are all drowning in more already.
Seeking utility from what already is. How particularly well-aligned to the rapid, recent ascent of AI and it’s many deep learning expressions! To dig through the internet and find the patterns and answers that already exist: is that solely the job of a system?
Should it be?
Image by Shauna Summers
The Age of Collectors
Enter: the Age of Collectors.
Humans and systems made by humans to collect, curate, listen, and translate.
Here are favourite examples of curation as a signal of transformational change. Mostly online, some of these sorters can operate IRL, too. I’ll differentiate from here on for clarification:
🤖 = digital inventory innovators
🛒 = IRL inventory innovators
Everything (ie: ideas)
Collectors of ideas. Connectors of big BIG dots. Zooming out and seeing oversized pictures that those of us on the ground cannot see. People or platforms for people.
🤖 Are.na
A platform for connecting ideas. My recycling-reusing-re-purposing heart be still! I’m sharing their description of themselves because, like them, it’s so dang lovely:
A platform for connecting ideas and building knowledge. According to them, they are:
1. online software for saving and organizing the content that is important to you
2. a toolkit for assembling new worlds from the scraps of the old
Students, hobbyists and what we call connected knowledge collectors have been the core of our community for 12 years and 192 days.
People describe Are.na as a garden of ideas, or Tumblr meets Wikipedia.
Image of the Are.na community
🤖 Pinterest Predicts
What are you vibing? That’s the question Pinterest Predicts can answer. Favouring the consumer product landscape, this analytics-driven resource comes out once a year with their micro-y-macro trends forecast.
It can be a little close to the pulse for longer lead programs to take action on. But knowing that the data is based on real people providing real inputs, helps sell the business case.
*to note: A Pinterest Business account helps support the data-slanted back end for client storytelling purposes. They haven’t hired me to promote them YET (whispers: I love you Pinterest), but it would be good to have a Business account to make full use of the capability in Pinterest Predicts.
Image from Pinterest Predicts
🤖 Me.
I feel the pulse. I’ll share it with you. Check out my continually evolving collection of ideas through my Big Ideas Pinterest page or through my Insight blog at https://www.mskuhl.com/insight.
2065: a place and time when vegetables are dissected, scanned, and presented in a Museum as things we used to grow in the earth and eat.
Image from Pierre-Francois Couderc for pariscotejardin.fr
2. Images-ish
Categorization: illustration, photography, video, motion, and image-like media things. Resources, repositories, and “other”.
🤖 same.energy.
Beta version of complete brilliance = All.The.Images. If you, like me, speak visual-processing better than other languages, then a visual search engine is for you.
Thus, here is one.
It’s made by Jacob, who does not yet know that we are best friends.
Hi, Jacob. Let’s be best friends.
🤔 Question: Need to kill 14 1/2 straight hours and feel wonderfully satisfied at the end?
😍 Answer: refresh the homepage 1.626,734 times. You’re welcome.
Image from same.energy
🤖 The Dot is Black.
Generative design & imagery. Using code to make images is mainstream now (hi, DALL-E, how are you?). But this is kind of different than that. It’s less about dogs in outspace wearing 1980’s aerobic leotards and battling each others with light saber’s painted in the art style of Matisse. It’s more about image making using the tool of technology (re: code).
The focus is research design and support of knowledge continuing to expand around “natural science studies, sound analysis and data visualization”.
Just controlling extreme complexity. 😎
A video made with code and also super relaxing! Visual: Breathe In Breathe Out
3. Printed Matter
Papergoods, magazine, and other printed materials. Having to do with art, design, imagery, technology, science, or culture. Sometimes made digital, sometimes only physical.
🤖 Omni via Internet Archive.
Science Magazine with brilliantly peculiar imagery. Cause I love the Internet Archive FOR LYFE. fyi It’s a massive, non-profit digital library. Sound like my jam? It. Is.
Sometimes it’s fun to dig around. Sometimes one finds an epic representation of vintage design and illustration! Spanning from 1978—1995, this archive offers hot updates on UFO’s, science fiction, space cities, farming, early Silicon Valley, and the science of the mind. Also expect articles by Isaac Asimov, Carl Sagan, and Robert A. Heinlein.
The adverts alone make this archive worth a look!
Image of an advert for an Onmi subscription
🛒🤖 Letterform Archive.
USA - West Coast: The Dog Patch, San Francisco. For the typography obsessed, repressed, or design-curious. This Legendary archive was started by a human collector. With over 40+ years gathering the physical history in design and type, the Archive has grown into a nonprofit centre for inspiration, education, publishing, and community.
While visiting, grab an 🍦 ice cream at Humphry Slocombe and check out the Museum of Craft and Design, which is just down the street.
Image from a members only event at Letterform Archive: Love Lettering with Laura Tjho & Christina Newhard
>>>> IRL and online events, lectures, courses, and salons pepper the calendar. Contact them for an onsite, customized deep dive into the archive.
>>>>>>>> Can’t make it in person? The online archive is tons of fun.
🛒🤖 The Design Library.
USA - East Coast: Wappingers Falls, upstate NY. Heaven in a converted fabric mill. A massive and well organized collection of image resources, the Design Library has “documentary fabrics, original paintings, wallpapers, embroideries and yarn dyes, numbering over seven million designs”, starting around the 1750s. They also have a subscription-based service.
This for-people-who-know IRL treasure is by appointment only. If you need an intro, drop me a line.
That day in May when I was set loose in the Library. 🐺
4. Lifestyle
Places to turn when you want someone to tell you what your lifestyle should feel like. Curated lives.
🛒🤖 Field & Supply.
USA - East Coast: Hudson Valley location, Kingston (upstate NY). A true maker’s market. Get ready for this curated piece of heaven to determine your future hygge life. If you didn’t believe it before, one visit will convince you that you cannot survive without many hand-poured candles, a locally sourced wheel of cheese, 4 hand-knitted blankets, and earthenware/woven baskets to house it all.
A friend of mine turned me on to this gathering. She is a part of a Womenswear fashion brand (also IRL curator), M. Patmos*. If you spot them at this market, check out their exceptional and ethical cashmere. I’m a big fan.
Image from the Market in upstate New York. (Love this kid in the bottom right of this image.)
>>>> The Spring Market dates are May 31—June 2, 2024.
🛒 West Coast Craft.
USA - West Coast: Fort Mason, San Francisco. Another maker’s market. The SF version. Just as curated, local, and covetable as the NY version. Less food. More hats. Much more color.
If stopping by, look out for my talented friend Baby Cats of CA and her uplifting, hand-drawn, hand-silk-screened treasures.
>>>> The Summer Market dates are June 8 & 9, 2024.
🛒🤖 Dover Street Market.
USA - East Coast: NYC Location. Not a maker’s market. More like a art-fashion-wet-dream-market. In case you’ve been living under a rock, raising/parenting children, or having an otherwise not-seeking-inspiration-and-or-luxury-and-or-to-understand-the-current-pulse-of-culture-as-a-whole-cause-I-have-a-life life: Dover Street Market.
You’re welcome.
>>>> Open like a normal store cause it’s a store. Look at the website.
>>>>>>>> Although many locations also have a coffee shop… so, I guess their hours are normal for a store/coffee shop cause it’s a store/coffee shop.
🛒🤖 Topdrawer.
USA - East Coast: Berkley, CA. Pens, paper, slippers and sunglasses. What else does one really need in life? These curators say: nothing!
Well, maybe a well-designed pair of socks. Slippers all the time is unrealistic… but now you need nothing else.
Let’s add a Japanese woodblock printed handkerchief though in case it’s cold. Now, nothing else.
Okay.
You can also have a camera.
But really, now, that’s IT.
Image from Topdrawer’s insta
Since a diet of charming accessories and papergoods will lead to a devastatingly malnourished body: hit up nearby Viks Chaat for authentic Indian food at this combo grocery store/cafe.
5. #Fashion
There too much rich goodness here to fit into this post.
STAY TUNED for a Style Collectors & Curators post coming soon!
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Need more? Unquenchable curiosity unquenched?
I feel you.
Keep your hat tipped toward the MsKuhl’s Insight blog… like you are. Well done. Already seeking and finding! Tasks accomplished. 💕
Need a specific deep dive? Let’s talk.