Algorithms Have Rather Limiting Taste

Recently I bought a ratchet set. I wanted to be able to change the oil of my motorcycle at home. I've never changed the oil of an engine. It was a bit of a rite of passage and I was glad I did it. Since then, Amazon has spent the last three months trying to sell me more ratchet sets.

The other day, I went to a friend's home where I noticed that they have three Netflix profiles per member of the household. Adam 1, Adam 2, Adam 3. I thought they'd been hacked but the reality was more disturbing – they needed to do this or they end up with recommendations that are too boring and predictable.

After expressing my exasperation at these things, someone suggested that I browse in incognito mode by default. Not to protect privacy, but to keep the algos at bay and keep what I see from the internet to be slightly less predictable, not skewed by what Google thinks I want to see instead of what I'm actually looking for.

What's happening when people are actively fighting personalization engines? What has gone wrong?

Here's something else I've noticed:

At a Christmas party, the moment the party took off was when someone took control of the music from the Spotify algorithmically collated party mix. Spotify was keeping things "consistent" - safe, predictable. The party was fine. Then a human took the initiative, played an unexpected banger and suddenly everyone's dancing.

The algorithm optimized for similarity. The human optimized for joy.

Human curation does something algorithms can't: it surprises us.

We've been sold "precision targeting" as progress. But it's making us smaller:

• We only see what we already like

• We only discover what fits our pattern

• We get trapped in bubbles we're actively trying to escape

Meanwhile, traditional media - radio, TV, cinema, outdoor - still creates the unexpected encounter.

The song you didn't know you needed on the radio in a cab. The film trailer for something you'd never have searched for showing before the movie at the cinema. The ad that made you laugh during a show you stumbled onto on TV.

That's not "inefficient" reach. That's serendipity. That's how we discover things. That's how brands become famous among people who barely think about them.

The smartest companies in the world have built algorithms that trap us in predictability. It's a very efficient business model.

Meanwhile, the "old" media still does something those algorithms can't: surprise us. This takes humans. Not so efficient but much more joyous.

Maybe that's not a bug in traditional media. Maybe that's the feature we forgot to value.

Maybe the antidote to the algorithm trap is spending more time with things curated by humans, not computers.

I'd love to hear your stories:

1. How have you fought an algorithm? (Multiple profiles? Incognito mode?)

2. When did traditional media or a friend introduce you to something amazing you'd never have found otherwise?

I think we've undervalued serendipity.

P.S. Amazon: one ratchet set is enough.