by Patrick Rhone, Master Generalist
Everything I’ve Learned So Far
I have about 112 hours of conscious life to live each week: wisdom dictates investing at least one of these hours to meditate on how I will use the remaining 111 hours.
I really enjoy everything James writes and this is no exception.
Inventing a Planet » Socio-Economic Caste Systems
“Classes” are the the “castes” of democracy. Put it this way: democracy is a “wiki-caste” system by which we categorize and define each other collectively in economic, racial and other various terms. The result is a social hierarchy that we can claim is not a caste system because it lacks formal designation or enforcement.
A single quote of this essay, no matter how brilliant, is no where near the brilliance of the whole. A must read. (and bookmark the entire site while you are there).
Wearing & Tearing « A Continuous Lean.
GAP says the denim is “Japanese” which I suspect to mean Japanese inspired, but made in China. Not that it really matters in this care, nor do I care. This was an experiment. Besides, those French jeans are made in Macao and cost $140. The point was: “Were the $300 jeans I am buying that much better? Could a $54 pair from a huge chain wear-in and look good?” I brought the jeans home, tried them on and then proceeded to wear them everyday for about 11 months straight. Those GAP jeans wore in amazingly.
I own a pair of these and can second this assessment. These are my favorite pair.
… it was as if he had filled a water balloon liquid nitrogen and decided that everybody needed to know how serious he was about his interpretive dance routine.
You can’t automate great curation. The Industrial Revolution automated production, and the technological age automated just about everything else in our lives. But factories and technology can’t automate creativity, imagination and instinct. If you want to make yourself irreplaceable, start getting creative.
Nice piece on the responsibility we all have to be great curators. (thx MiGrant)
Wikibollocks: The Shirky Rules – Whimsley
If you want to provoke discussion, logic and detail are not your friends. Instead, don’t worry about loose ends and half-expressed ideas – just keep the audience’s interest and provide colour, and let them fill in the gaps later. Make sure your audience is not sure what’s coming next, not sure if they quite understood what they just heard. That’s what makes for good entertainment. It’s the First Rule of Big Ideas: tell stories and think by analogy.
Extremely well written editorial on the nature of storytelling, analogy, and augmentation. Also, Clay Shirky. (thx Al3x)
Here’s how it works: Issue Zero begins May 7th. We’ll unveil a theme and you’ll have 24 hours to produce and submit your work. We’ll take the next 24 to snip, mash and gild it. The end results will be a shiny website and a beautiful glossy paper magazine, delivered right to your old-fashioned mailbox. We promise it will be insane. Better yet, it might even work.
Brilliant and fascinating idea from Heather Champ and Derek Powazeck. I’m a big fan of magazines and have a special place in my heart for these two.
As regular readers know, the role I assume here and aim to fill is that of a Curator. My stated goal of this site is to find interesting items that fall under the stated topic area and gather them together along with some commentary that will hopefully provide interest, context, and cause you, the reader, to investigate further.
While I think I am doing a fine enough job of this for the site, I am horrible about it when it comes to aggregating all of my online projects into one central place where people can find it all. While I am certainly thinking about a way to execute such a place on a more permanent basis, I thought I would take some time out here to post all the places you can find my work:
patrickrhone.com – My personal site where I write essays on just about anything that captures my interest as well as personal topics. The latest post, certainly of interest in this context, is titled Why I Curate.
The Random Post – Where I curate the things that don’t seem to fit anywhere else.
Minimal Mac – Minimalist computing as it relates to the Mac universe and the general topic of what is “enough” when it comes to technology as a whole.
Practical Opacity – Exploring the idea of “enough” as it relates to social media, email, and online interactions and distractions.
Duchess Beatrix – Where I “ghost write” a blog for my daughter, The Duchess of Heckofalot (go read it and it will all make sense).
A Better Freelancer – I coauthor and cocurate this site along with Aaron Mahnke. A place that helps freelancers such as myself become, well, better. If you are a freelancer or thinking of becoming a “business of one”, check it out.
So, there you have the bulk of the places you can find me. Hope this helps. Especially those I have received feedback on doing this very thing.
Note: I will likely cross post this at the other locations as well so do not be put off by visiting and seeing this duplicated.
I happen to live just a few blocks away from Common Good Books, a book store owned by Garrison Keillor (of A Prairie Home Companion fame). One of the things I love about it, and that makes it so very special, is that it is studiously and exactingly curated. It is not a big store, yet it has the same basic number of sections as a large retailer would. The thing is, each section has about 20-40 books on any given topic area. Not just any books mind you – only the ones the well read and knowledgeable employees feel are the best. In fact, it is virtually impossible to get a “bad” book because of this. Wanna know about gardening? Just go to that section and pick up any book and it is bound to be just what you needed. It’s fantastic.
I have a great amount of respect for good curation because it is largely what I consider myself. The role I perform at most of my online ventures (save this one), and the title I assume is “Curator”. My goal is to find interesting items that fall under specific topic areas and gather them together along with some commentary that will hopefully provide interest, context, and cause the reader to investigate further. I don’t want to post, “reblog”, or otherwise highlight just any article, infographic, product, or link. I only want to post examples that I feel are the best of the breed. I also want to do so in a way that gives ultimate credit to the content creator in the form they intend. What I strive for is that, just like that ideal bookstore, you will be able to go to Minimal Mac, Practical Opacity, The Random Post, etc., click on any permalink, and find something that is a perfect representative of the topic area.
Of course, I’m no trailblazer here. I stand on the shoulders of some folks who I have long admired. In fact, the original term for what became what we now call a blog, “weblog”, was used to describe a site that was more an act of curation than solely consisting of original content. In fact, I rather prefer that the terms blog and blogger refer to this more traditional role, as the proper term for those individuals who trade in original long-form content is “Essayist” but I digress…
The best curated blogs have been around for almost as long as the Internet itself. Jason Kottke, for instance, has made a very long and successful run as someone who is an excellent curator and consistently highlights and provides insightful commentary on a wide and diverse iety of quality Internet finds. Boing Boing is another in that same league. John Gruber of Daring Fireball, while providing some of the best Macintosh long-form editorial commentary around, is also a fantastic curator of related links. In fact, if one only followed DF, one would have all they really need to know about what is going on in the Mac universe. If I was only half as tall as these giants I would be doing well.
This is the sort of excellence, longevity, and consistency I strive for. I think in this highly overwhelming information age, where literally anything we wish to know about is available to us in an instant, more knowledgeable and trusted sources are needed to curate the signal from the noise.
