Curation adds value. Marketing does not add value.
Many content curation startups, and many of the people using curation tools will probably not like what I have written in this article, but I have a hard time behaving as if I couldn't see a cardboard façade that's been sold for a real destination.
Content Curationhas beenhijacked and has been sold as a cheap and easy solution for content marketers plagued by the growing problem of getting greater attention from their readers and therefore of how to produce more quality content within tighter and tighter time constraints.
The façade is the promotion of the idea that by “adopting” content curation tools and “techniques” (like picking, selecting and showcasing “best of content” to others) you can actually rapidly gain the same benefits and rewards that true, highly reputable curators and experts in any field have conquered after years of hard work.
“There’s at least one common thread between the disparate nations, cultures, and people in conflict, one element that has demonstrably proven to make these uprisings more likely: high global food prices.
“Just over a year ago, complex systems theorists at the New England Complex Systems Institute warned us that if food prices continued to climb, so too would the likelihood that there would be riots across the globe. Sure enough, we’re seeing them now. The paper’s author, Yaneer Bar-Yam, charted the rise in the FAO food price index—a measure the UN uses to map the cost of food over time—and found that whenever it rose above 210, riots broke out worldwide. It happened in 2008 after the economic collapse, and again in 2011, when a Tunisian street vendor who could no longer feed his family set himself on fire in protest.”
Bar-Yam’s model forewarned about the Arab Spring and the Tunisian self-immolation. Well, not those specific ways unrest would manifest, but that something big and ugly was bound to happen. Similarly, the same model divined that there would be conflicts around the world this year—as we have seen in the Ukraine, Venezuela, Brazil, Thailand, Bosnia, Syria, Spain, France, Sweden…. Last year’s global food prices were the third-highest on record; this is no coincidence. See the article for more on Bar-Yam’s methods as well as specific links between food scarcity and some of the conflicts currently shaking the world.
What can this technology do, besides hand a few of us a big bucket of “I-told-you-so”? Armed with this information, policymakers could take steps to modify the way the global marketplace is run and stop (at least some, possibly most) food shortages before they start. This means powerful people from many countries would have to work together to make major changes on a global scale for the good of humanity. With money involved. Hey, anything’s possible, right?
We’ve become a society that’s data rich and meaning poor. A rise in specialists in all areas – science, math, history, psychology – has resulted in tremendous content. But how valuable is that knowledge without context?
Despite the corporate world’s insistence on specialization, the workers most likely to come out on top are generalists – but not just because of their innate ability to adapt to new workplaces, job descriptions or cultural shifts. Instead, according to writer Carter Phipps, author of Evolutionaries generalists will thrive in a culture where it’s becoming increasingly valuable to know “a little bit about a lot.”
Meaning that where you fall on the spectrum of specialist to generalist could be one of the most important aspects of your personality – and your survival in an ever-changing workplace.
Does the name Aleksand Dugin ring you any bells? Well, he is one of the advisors of Putin and on 9 March 2014 he provided Putin a plan on how to dominate Europe. Aleksandr Dugin is a gestrategic and idealogical man which has published a plan named ‘The Russian Spring', the Russian spring is a strategic plan on how Putin can lead Russia to a victory which will hold the area of Europe.
We are beginning to witness a paradox at the heart of capitalism, one that has propelled it to greatness but is now threatening its future: The inherent dynamism of competitive markets is bringing costs so far down that many goods and services are becoming nearly free, abundant, and no longer subject to market forces. While economists have always welcomed a reduction in marginal cost, they never anticipated the possibility of a technological revolution that might bring those costs to near zero.
Even a government agency like the United States Geological Survey (USGS) is now acknowledging that Fracking is the cause of earthquakes. But such is the stranglehold of carbon energy on the Congress and the White House that I don't expect anything will be done about it. If you happen to be in a Fracking zone… tough.
The United States Geological Survey (USGS) issued a press release yesterday indicating that the magnitude 5.7 earthquake that struck Prague, Oklahoma in 2011 was unintentionally human-induced.
The USGS claims that the magnitude 5.0 earthquake triggered by waste-water injection the previous day ‘trigger[ed] a cascade of earthquakes, including a larger one, [which] has important implications for reducing the seismic risk from waste-water injection.”
