- The faculty of making fortunate discoveries by accident.
- The fact or occurrence of such discoveries.
- An instance of making such a discovery.
It seems that our fortunate discoveries are becoming more and more accurate. Now we can get a very accurate fortunate suggestion on which restaurant we want to visit (hint, hint Alfred) based on what we like. Or we can find the most accurate music recommendations based on our social circles (AudioVroom). However whatever happened to those life changing experiences that one could not imagine on their own, or even think about trying ever?
Life never asks us for our tastes and preferences. It does not come up with another “recommendation” if we are not satisfied with our current situation. We are exposed to completely new experiences that we may or may not like. The main difference is that in real life we dont have a choice. If I am stuck in a lobby playing a piano composition in the background, I will have to listen to it. I can not skip it, or get recommendations for the next song based on my current interest in music. I might like it, or perhaps I wont. I dont have a choice. However this is not true when it comes to technology. If Pandora doesn’t play a song to my tastes, I am very quick in hitting the skip button. If an app doesn’t give me an accurate suggestion when I search for nearby Thai places, I will not use it again.
This is one of the biggest problems with recommendations through technology. They are bound to have a bigger focus on accuracy because the user wants only good experiences. True serendipity comes at a cost of bad experiences, which we as a consumer are not ready to take. The technology allows us to demand accuracy, and allows us to keep ourselves in our comfort zone of experiences. I can end up talking to a person who designs soup can labels in real life, but I wont probably end up at a similar event with them because our “interests” dont match. The amount of serendipity we can offer is limited by the amount of risk involved in the actual suggestion or decision. Till the time we learn how to package the bad with the good, we will end up serving more and more accurately tuned results, than just sheer luck.