These algorithems don't destroy our taste, they shape it. If it woundnt be for IMDb recommendations, I'd be wasting a lot more time watching bad movies.
Taste is increasingly dictated by algorithms
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Re: Taste is increasingly dictated by algorithms
#22Pop-up galleries designed for instagram selfie appeal, restaurant trendiness where one ramen place is the "internet approved" one and has an hour long line, and a place two blocks away with a different style - but not really worse, just not as trendy - has no line at all, etc - there are definitely ways in which there's more of a hive mind than ever. The meme popularity of bacon on the internet, even. For a more local example: growing up, Whataburger was just another Texas fast food option, not a tightly-held piece of people's online identities.
But at the same time, there's a lot of opportunities for increased individualism. You can buy clothes and furniture from far more places. You can much more exhaustively search restaurants. You have way more options in what you watch and listen to. Even the existence of "mainstream hipster" taste in movies is a change compared to just "maintstream" being a single thing.
So is personal taste really less present than it used to be? I don't think so, I think the domains just shifted around a bit.
Re: Taste is increasingly dictated by algorithms
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
Great point, they didn't have algorithms deciding our music in the 1990s, instead you had Clear Channel. Radio in the 1990s was the same 40-60 songs played over and over. Then for TV you basically had the 4 major networks,FOX Friday Night, Must See TV, TGIF, and all the rest. People don't remember how much that sucked.
Actually, in the 1990s was the peak of major commercial broadcast networks with 6, not 4 (the old big 3, plus Fox, plus UPN And The WB.)
Ah yes, the Wayans Brothers channel and the Star Trek Voyager channel
Re: Taste is increasingly dictated by algorithms
#24'Yer ugly and your Echo dresses you funny.'
Re: Taste is increasingly dictated by algorithms
#25I cant speak for all mediums, but Spotify's "Related Artists" feature has grown my personal taste in music more then anything else ever has. The ability to easily find similar artists to the one I am currently enjoying drastically lowered the barrier to entry for me and music.
Re: Taste is increasingly dictated by algorithms
#26> No one is original anymore, not even you.
Article opens with the quote, but that's the essence of a vast amount of art through the ages: only the thinnest bit of art is truly original, and looking to get rid of the non-original bits generates absurd junk.
I would argue that the cult of original and the cult of individualism-via-consumerism is largely an 1800s ideology filtered through post-war marketing. "only by consuming a unique set can you truly be yourself" is a fascinating and materialist way of looking at the world.
Gently, I would suggest that we are neither original nor should we find our identity in material goods.
Elsewhere in this thread the word "serendipity" is used - this is a true observation in my opinion. The internet removes serendipity, replacing it with "you may also like". While libraries have librarians making selections, they also allow for a free-range wandering over the stacks, rather than keeping you in one specific area of "you may also like". That is something worth thinking about, and, I think, solvable.
Re: Taste is increasingly dictated by algorithms
#27I'm a film buff and I think so. A lot of people don't seem to go out of their way to obtain films aside from looking at Netflix recommendations. Back when I used OkCupid I could tell when something older went on because it immediately got listed under "favorite movies" by a certain type of hipster ;) (I distinctly remember how overnight everyone looooovveeed Amelie when it went up) Sadly it's a lot harder to find new…
It might be interesting to analyze how it is you serendipitously find new films and whether that could be applied to a site like Netflix. Is it a cover that catches your eye? A recommendation from a passerby? A random pick off the shelf? Etc. Any of these approaches could be replicated in a web interface. I think Stumbleupon was quite clever at what it did and I'm disappointed more services haven't picked up on the "…
>It might be interesting to analyze how it is you serendipitously find new films and whether that could be applied to a site like Netflix.
Netflix seems to have a borderline religious obsession with keeping the UI "simple",
A "random film" button would be welcome IMHO. (Or random within categories)
Re: Taste is increasingly dictated by algorithms
#28> That we are in the midst of this shift in taste might help explain our larger mood of instability and paranoia (or is it just me?). It's just you. There's always been a mainstream and an underground. Now the underground is much larger and more diverse and arguably the mainstream is a bit better (due to said diversity). Source: I lived through the 90s and was basically forced by Clear Channel to listen to Ozzy Osbou…
It seems to me that there are no more undergrounds any more - it's very hard for something to be both "popular" and "undiscovered", and there's an entire industry of trend-hunters looking to monetise new scenes the second they're discovered.
Similarly the mainstream is not so big any more. Back in 1977 half the UK, 28 million people, watched the Morecambe and Wise Christmas Show live. That was our peak mainstream, a shared set of jokes everyone could be expected to know. Now peak programmes reach about half that audience.
Re: Taste is increasingly dictated by algorithms
#29Clickbait titles does a disservice to the purpose of the body of an article in the sense that it gives easy ammunition to naysayers who will default to pointing out that the degree to which the argument is valid is incorrect. Yes, algorithms may have influenced personal taste in some ways. But has it "destroyed" personal taste? No, that's probably too extreme.
Re: Taste is increasingly dictated by algorithms
#30Really interesting article. Weird thing is that in the social media era, humans ourselves seem behave in algorithmic ways. My Twitter feed is full of Beyonce worship every few months even though I've been mostly-indifferent to her music for 20 years. But when people come together like a hive and retweet how they excited they are about some shared interest, there doesn't need to be a recommendation engine pushing a sp…
I don't know that algorithms are the sole cause, but this behavior, where nearly everyone has the same opinion, really annoys me. As you said, Beyonce worship is a common one. Or that Empire Strikes Back is the best of the original Star Wars and Return of the Jedi is the worst. I hear these ideas all over as if they were facts rather than opinions. Just have an original thought people.