How Many Choices Are Your Own?
Are your preferences your own? It’s an interesting question posed by The New Yorker in regards to options dictated by algorithms. The thesis: “Besieged by automated recommendations, we are left to guess exactly how they are influencing us, feeling in some moments misperceived or misled and in other moments clocked with eerie precision. At times, the computer sometimes seems more in control of our choices than we are.”
Right.
So am I choosing the route I drive, or is Waze? Am I choosing the books I purchase, or do I purchase books I know about because an algorithm fed them to me based on other purchases in the past? I definitely have fallen down a rabbit hole of British murder mysteries. But did I dig that rabbit hole? I’m kind of happy to be here, but I don’t know what I’m missing out on by taking this path.
The piece goes on to talk about algorithmic anxiety, which I’m not sure I feel. I’m more algorithmically curious about where my preferences begin and outward influences end.
1 comment
I reject as much, if not more, of what the algorithms present as I accept. There are a lot of cool things out there diverted by my intrinsic habit of saying “I’m not paying *that* much for that!” Cool t-shirts with witty sayings? Awesome! $30? Not a chance. “This item looks cool, but I just want to try it, I don’t want to pay shipping, and I’m not buying enough for free shipping, so I guess that’s a no.” Most of my book recommendations come from friends or blogs or articles – I don’t know if the algorithms even knows I read! Google maps? Sure, but I’m going to take this alternate route, because I really just wanted to see if it knew about any construction. Or I like this road better. I tend to do a lot of random stuff to confound the algorithms.