July is a difficult month for me. Fortunately, I have a good therapist, and I’m in the habit of reconnecting with him for a few sessions during this month. He knows how to listen and is very insightful, an important combination for his profession.
He usually gives me plenty to think about between meetings, and one thing I’ve been mulling over lately is how I (and we) make choices about what kind of information we’re exposed to as we move through the days.
Recently I listened to a podcast about developing an individual sense of taste, and how difficult that is in a media world that is largely (although not exclusively) driven by algorithms. My devices are so connected that if I express an interest in a thing or an idea on any of them I’m almost immediately inundated with variations on, “If you like that, then you’ll probably be interested in this,” and a few more clicks along the same theme results in a crowded platform with no room for much of anything that doesn’t fit the algorithm.
I’d like to think that I have a free choice in what to look at, listen to, read, etc., but with so much raw information out there and with the sophistication of the algorithms doing so much of the sorting, filtering, and winnowing out before I ever see anything, exposure to something new or unexpected takes work. Much easier to lie back and let the algorithms say, “We noticed that you like sports cars, and we have a few hundred thousand videos, articles, and consumer products that we would love to show you.” Substitute something else – cats, horses, guns, politics, porn, you name it – for sports cars, and it’s easy to see how a couple of choices creates a path that takes real effort to step away from.
I’m thinking that a small plaque for my desk that says “Beware the algorithm” might be a good investment. Maybe I’ll Google it and see what happens.