The Great Curation — Will Mannon

“After the 2016 election, all my conversations now end with ‘It’s going to be...interesting’ ”.

I love watching stand-up at The Comedy Store in Hollywood. Shortly after the 2016 election, comedian Mark Maron often told this slick one-liner. And he was right – things have been “interesting”. And then some. Outrageous tweets and articles scream from our phones each morning. Tribal warfare rages on Twitter and Facebook feeds. Cable channels stir political spats up into national frenzies

The internet has dramatically flipped our information ecology. In the past, the spread of information was limited by physical realities -- newspaper routes, cable bandwidths, radio frequencies. In an online world, anyone can distribute ideas at no cost with just a few clicks. We’ve transitioned from information scarcity to information abundance in just over two decades. At first this information wave spread slowly -- blogs, YouTube and social media sites were seen as the turf of the young. Even as these services spread, mainstream life remained fairly normal.

The 2016 election changed everything.

Donald Trump’s stunning victory shocked mainstream America like an ALS ice bucket. “Algorithm”, “tribalism” and “fake news” became household terms. The internet’s information glut broke through to Main Street.

Three years later, the shock of his victory has largely worn off. We’ve become numb to the bizarre headlines and petty squabbles. When I talk with friends about the 2020 election, they often point to candidates like Joe Biden or Elizabeth Warren, traditional choices they hope will bring things “back to normal.” My response has two parts:

Things are never going “back to normal”
Things are going to change exponentially more quickly moving forward

I believe most people underestimate the magnitude of the information revolution reshaping society. They see new technology and media as a five-foot waves of change -- voice-enabled devices, helpful apps, new ways to share videos with friends -- when in fact we’re being inundated by a Laird Hamilton-esque tsunami of information abundance. And before this wall of water completes its deluge, we will be hit by another monster swell. Then another. AR, VR, blockchain, drones, automation of jobs. A train of tsunamis loom in the coming decades.

In his piece What the Hell is Going On, David Perell identifies the dramatic ways in which the shift from information scarcity to information abundance has upended commerce, education, and politics. Building off of David’s work, I will focus on the tremendous opportunity information abundance presents curious, ambitious learners. With clear thinking, we can capture powerful trends that are tearing society apart and harness them for good.

Perell outlines how and why information abundance is reshaping different realms of daily life. His final line offers a note of hope: Until we understand and adapt to our digital environment, we will not be able to reap its fruits. I believe the digital fruits to be picked are plentiful and thrilling to consider. We just need to see them clearly.

Kinks in the Hose

About once a month, I wash my car.

I drag the long green hose from my front yard out to my driveway. I fill a bucket with soapy suds and get to work. Once I’ve scrubbed my Toyota clean, it’s time to rinse. But all too often, when I first squeeze the hose nozzle, expecting a geyser of water, I’m met with only a trickle. Frustrated, I look back at the long, looping green rubber tube and spot the problem: kinks. Often several of them. The long hose folds back on itself and creates multiple choke points that prevent water from flowing, and me from rinsing my car. I must shake out the kinks before the water flows at its full potential.

More good ideas exist than ever before. Around the US, and the world, individuals are thinking elevated thoughts, imagining bold solutions to our challenges, and envisioning a brighter future.

But like water in my hose, most of these ideas are stuck.

Thought-provoking ideas about the future are scattered and decentralized. I’ll prove it: pull up any podcast with ideas that make your heart sing. Click “See Available Episodes” or “View All”. Then scroll to the earliest recorded show. What year do you arrive at, 2017? 2015? Look at the caliber of guest - likely the same phenomenal quality as today. And then imagine the number of listens that early episode has received in 2019. A hundred? A few dozen? Likely not many.

A wealth of knowledge lies dormant in old podcast interviews. Scintillating conversations about our changing world have been recorded and promptly forgotten.

And podcasts are a brand new medium! Imagine the volume of wisdom resting undisturbed in forgotten books. Consider the powerful ideas swirling inside bright minds across the globe, trapped between their ears for lack of encouragement or opportunity to share. Intellectual capital and human capital suffer from severe kinks that prevent world-shaking ideas from inspiring curious minds across the globe.

Digital Cartographers

Our commercial, educational, and media ecosystems are being dramatically upended by the abundant information of the internet age. Not a soul alive today knows where these trends lead, because future outcomes are undetermined. The coming world is malleable, not set in stone. Our collective choices will determine the world we create.

The quality of our choices will be determined by our ideas - our capacity to imagine new patterns of commerce, new paradigms of learning, and new forms of media. As Steve Jobs famously said :

“Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you. And you can change it, you can influence it… Once you learn that, you'll never be the same again.”

This sentiment rings truer today than ever before. The world needs lucid thinkers to continually process “what the hell is going on”, and propose bold ideas to maximize the positive impact of these trends while minimizing the negative. Peter Thiel convincingly points to sprawling “white spaces left on the map of human knowledge” that balloon ever larger as the information revolution continues. We need legions of “digital cartographers”, as Perell coins it, to continually map our unfurling reality, to nudge us toward a bright, productive future. Innovative ideas are our guiding light; the cartographers’ paint and brush. The world craves bold thinking unshackled from decaying institutions and fading 20th century norms.

The Great Curation

At present, digital cartographers largely work alone or in small groups. Mapping of our digital future occurs in scattered locations: discussions of niche books, old podcast interviews, Discourse forums, and the emerging “Twitter-Blogo-sphere”. Great ideas bubble up and are kicked around these fringe idea markets. Perell writes that forbidden truths about the 21st century “are shared in whispers, not shouts.” At any given time, a “digital cartographer” only has a partial understanding of the broader map emerging. Other pieces of the whole lay dormant in hidden outlets, or trapped within other people’s heads.

Novelist Anthony Doerr described the human mind as “one wet kilogram within which spin universes.” What if there were a way to bring together the brilliant, rich minds of “digital cartographers” together, making them more productive and effective at generating understanding and ideas about the world to come? What if we could induce collaboration between digital cartographers, encouraging each other to map our changing society emboldening them to produce bold new methods of harnessing the information age tsunami for good? I believe we can. And it starts with a Great Curation.

Tyler Cowen is an endlessly curious economist and generalist who views the world through fascinating lenses. His podcast interviews and article topics run the gamut of ideas and disciplines. He has recorded about 80 hours worth of podcast interviews, known as “Conversations With Tyler”, since 2015. How many people have a) closely listened to all of these episodes, b) taken detailed notes on each episodes, and c) identified key themes and bold ideas from the collection of episodes, and d) shared these ideas with the public?

My guess is zero. No one has ever done this.

This is likely true for other thinkers, writers, podcasters, YouTube essayists...the list continues. There is such a rich wealth of content available for curious minds to be almost overwhelming. The process of developing “digital cartographers” begins with bright minds amassing and curating valuable, hidden information sources such as “Conversations With Tyler” and sharing it with the public. Different individuals should pick whatever topics make them feel alive. As they sift through silt and emerge with intellectual gold, then share this gold, they will become “idea antennas”, like a magnet for motivated thinkers with similar interests. As lucid thinkers congregate around different virtual stockpiles of curated ideas, a virtuous cycle will emerge:

Curation → Sharing → Collaboration → Production → Curation → etc. etc.

Enthusiastic learners, with or without credentials, have a tremendous opportunity to break free of “Old Guard” thinking and boldly charge ahead into our brave new future. With tools like Slack, Discourse, and Zoom, we are equipped with unparalleled opportunities to trade ideas with bright minds from around the world. We’re no longer limited by location. Further, we have unprecedented tools and methods to retain and synthesize ideas (Evernote, Airtable, Instapaper), which will only continue to improve over time. This constellation of factors leaves us with exponential potential for the growth of ideas and a transformation of learning and idea generation in the 21st century. How this will change education and learning more broadly in decades to come remains unknown. But it will all begin with a Great Curation.