What is the meaning of value, when reputation is the main criteria to obtain it? There is a slippery slope here, where being seen equals power equals money. How can we make sure quality is a factor?
When traditional publishing houses are concerned about staying alive in this internet age, and sales become more or at least as important as quality....
When social media and even politics becomes about followers instead of content...
When having a name, a reputation, is a reason to be trusted...
... quality is at risk.
But how then to measure quality? We trust the market to make sure the yoghurt nobody likes either changes or disappears, right? Why not trust the market for writing, for creation of ideas, for development of thought? I guess early on it was realised there had to be places where thought and ideas could be produced, a place outside of the market, outside of the political market. Wasn't that the reason for the story in the Bible where Jesus threw out the salespeople from the place of worship? A place where one could occupy oneself with thought, community, spiritual life... that was no place for people with commercial interest.
Quality is perhaps best measured by the time one allows for something to develop.
This why curation is important. Curation that does not allow for half measures. Curation that focuses on providing visibility to what remains unseen. But what happens when something gets curated, gets seen, but when that doesn't lead to more views, more interaction, more community? Isn't curation not one more way to give a name, a reputation, to someone who doesn't have one of his own? Doesn't this kind of curation keep a commercial system in place, adding an illusion of quality to it?
I'm not sure.
I saw this picture, shared by Philosophy Matters on their social media. Normally I would hit the 'share' button, but there is none here. Please visit the original post, and follow them on Twitter, if you happen to do such things...
