I’ve been thinking about algorithms, the ideas have been bubbling around in my mind for awhile and now with the brouhaha around the Facebook changes it seemed like a good time for my (currently) cranky point of view.
I was annoyed by “top stories” from the moment it launched. And this morning I saw the epitome of why I am annoyed. The top story in my feed was a “friend” I haven’t meaningfully engaged with on FB (or off) who was playing some game I didn’t care about it. Fail. What on earth in the algorithm triggered that into my top stories?
And other algorithms I routinely ponder:
Netflix (Quikster) – in my experience the suggested movies are usually terrible and I have some trouble figuring out the commonality between movie a and movie b.
Amazon – I often use the site as a research tool so the logic behind its suggestions for me can be idiotic. Your mileage may vary.
Goodreads – I’m much more impressed with this one, as it has been better than most although it does suggest I read a book whose description I can’t read because it is in Italian. (Although, I am wondering if this is the Universe telling me to pack in the job search and bum around Italy to become fluent in Italian.)
Cameras – I don’t use the preset settings without also performing manual overrides (i.e. shutter priority while using exposure compensation and manually selecting the ISO.) Oh, and I shoot raw files so that I can develop my images as I see them not how the camera’s algorithm sees.
I’m not sure what the answer is and I’d like the coders to keep trying to match up my tastes, it certainly beats “frictionless” sharing which is a whole lot of noise not serendipitous discovery.