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In Silicon Valley, one no longer picks, chooses, selects, or even edits. One "curates." Take, for example, Jason Calacanis's self-congratulatory wrap-up of TechCrunch40, a blog post titled "Conference Curation." What does that mean, exactly?

Calacanis and fellow organizers Michael Arrington and Heather Harde, he claims, didn't just randomly assemble a bunch of startups willing to kowtow to their terms. Nor did they sift through the applications in some open, meritocratic process. Instead, they "curated" the list of presenters, as a university librarian might pick out volumes for a collection. Bloggers, too, try to dignify their work by claiming that they "curate" links, instead of admitting that they just post things they find interesting. By claiming to "curate," not "choose," people like Calacanis try to lend an academic dignity to their work — at the same time that they brush away charges of self-serving subjectivity. Of course the selection is biased and untransparent. But by calling his choices "curation," an entrepreneur can spin greed as good.