Simply put, we're living in the era of abundance and curation helps combat information overload. In this context, one of my favorite case studies on the importance of curation comes from a nearly 200-year-old publisher with a legacy of breadth and depth, The Economist.
Once snippets, articles, and pages of books become ubiquitous, shuffleable, and transferable, users will earn prestige and perhaps income for curating an excellent collection.