Page 18 - AC/E Digital Culture Annual Report

18what the source, at face value, but to critically analyze it, question it and verify it against di er- ent 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 o - cially 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 totell 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 nd 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 ap- proach to nding and reading online information, based on the awareness that ALL content must be checked, vetted and veri ed.Online SearchSearch 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 o ered a selection of playlists, compilations, collections or hubs, compiled by well-pro led experts, covering that theme rather than a speci c 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 speci c realm of infor- mation (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 speci c 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-de ned area, and byCONTENT CURATION IN THE DIGITAL AGE. CURATION FOR DIGITAL HERITAGE · ROBIN GOODSmart culture. Analysis of digital trends