I’ve been working in offices where Spotify plays in the background. I like having music on at work.
But after a couple hours of a same-same song landscape, I start to go numb and stop hearing anything at all coming through the speakers.
For hours, I couldn’t tell you a thing that played. Not the artist, not the instrumentation, not a lyric or a lick. It’s just a haze of same.
I never wonder, “what’s this?” “who’s that?” I don’t even have an opinion on what’s playing. It’s “fine.” Non offensive, public-space, background music.
Periodically, I stop working and check the headlines of Google news. My feed consists of a stream of topics and opinions that are in line with whatever I’ve texted, talked about or clicked on in the past. In my political headlines, my candidate is always right and the opponent is an idiot. It’s very comforting to know this, but I suspect that my neighbor receives the opposite content from the same search engine.
If businesses could interest consumers in more diverse content, they could sell more product.
After work, I come home and open Netflix to relax and catch up with the zeitgeist. There I consume a tepid brew of whatever genre, actors, directors, or series I’ve watched recently. Once I took a six-month break from Netflix, and when I returned, the same shows were offered up, as though no new content had been created in the interim.
This is the blurred scenery of my life. Similar sounding artists, unchanging news topics, and look-alike movies. White noise. I’ve seen, heard, watched or read all of this stuff multiple times to the point where I could write the script myself. I’m not growing, challenged, thoughtful, or even interested.
When was the last time I discovered something that confused or excited me?
The Tyranny of the Algorithm
This lack of serendipity in our lives is by design. We are served content through recommender systems that seek to meet our expectations, wants and needs, based on our behavior. Click on a few links and the algorithm behind these applications use that information to serve you more of the same.
Before automated content-based filtering, we had curators in the form of content programmers, editors, bookers, DJs, teachers, influential friends, and so on. Those people also had a hand in what I might be exposed to but at least they were someone other than me. Today’s algorithm uses my online behavior to decide what I might engage with next. I’m effectively in a feedback loop of one.
I can try to thwart the apps by exercising so-called free will. But even if I make an unusual choice with intent to break free, the algorithm converts that randomness and I fall back into my predestined path. The next course of content will mine that vein.
We have technology. Let’s use it.
I can wipe out my history on some of the apps, if I have the patience to scroll through buried directions, but within a few days of the algorithm retraining on my behavior, my cold break starts to run warm again.
Businesses have always devoted a good deal of effort trying to nail what customers want; increased user engagement leads to increased revenue.
But although the seller may fear the consequences of surprising the buyer, isn’t there some danger of fatigue, ambivalence or disengagement? Would businesses in fact benefit from being able to move us into more diverse content so they could serve up even more product?
We do have technology; let’s use it.
Surprise Me
Content servers should allow the user to randomly generate results. The mechanism could be a slider or a radio dial that can be amped up to 10 depending on how much contrast the user wishes to affect.
Sliding the dial to 4 in a news feed might take the reader from progressive headlines to a centrist bent. Landing on 6 would move the Netflix viewer from Batman to Battleship Potemkin. A scroll up to 10, brings the Spotify listener from Taylor Swift to Cecil Taylor.
The content provider can still use an algorithm to serve up the content, but instead of using me as my own curator, it serves me content from the feed of someone who is about a 4 or a 6 or a 10 away from me.
Since some people will not want to leave their comfort zone, there should be two selection options available. The default search option would function as it does today; it mines users for clues and locks them into the ever-narrowing tunnel of content. The second option is the free choice dial, which lives right next to the default search option and is for users who wish to be confronted with a contrasting perspective.
Broadening a user’s horizon should encourage engagement with even more content, making this a win for the business and the consumer. The consumer is engaged and interested; the business can offer a broader product range, increasing the chance to grow revenue.
If this works for content platforms, it could fan out to social media and expand the “For You” page beyond just “From Me.”
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robin rusch
