Steven Rosenbaum writes in Fast Company:

"Yesterday, 250 million photos were uploaded to Facebook, 864,000 hours of video were uploaded to YouTube, and 294 BILLION emails were sent."

And that doesn't include Twitter, Tumblr, and Pinterest. Yowsa.

"While devices struggle to separate spam from friends, critical information from nonsense, and signal from noise, the amount of data coming at us is increasingly mind-boggling.

"In 2010 we frolicked, Googled, waded, and drowned in 1.2 zettabytes of digital bits and bytes. A year later volume was on an exponential growth curve toward 1.8 zettabytes. (A zettabyte is a trillion gigabytes; thatâs a 1 with 21 zeros trailing behind it.)"

"Which means it's time to enlist the web's secret power -- humans."

This is how Yahoo! got started in 1994: Humans Curating The Web.

Rosenbaum says there's a difference between curating and stealing:

1. If you don't add context, or opinion, or voice and simply lift content, it's stealing.

2. If you don't provide attribution, and a link back to the source, it's stealing.

3.   If you take a large portion of the original content, it's stealing.

4. If someone asks you not to curate their material, and you don't respect that request, it's stealing.

5. Respect published rights. If images don't allow creative commons use, reach out to the image creator -- don't just grab it and ask questions later.

The hyperlink is a great form of attribution.

(If that's not enough for you, feel free to use the complicated Curators Code.)

Rosenbaum then reveals why he's writing on behalf of curators:

"The Web is going to keep growing fast. And the solution to making sense of the massive volume is a new engaged partnership between humans and machines. There are a number of companies building cool solutions you can explore if you're looking for curation tools. Among them: Curata, CurationSoft, Scoop.it, Google+, Storify.com, PearlTrees.com, MySyndicaat.com, Curated.by, Storyfy,Evri, Paper.li, Pearltrees, and of course Magnify.net (where I hang my hat)."

His is a video curation company.

His final call to action:

"So, if you're ready to be a superhero, now's the time. The web needs you. Your readers need you. All you need is a web browser and a cape. The rest is up to you."

He had me up until the end there.

But after that ending, I gotta declare: NO CAPES !!!