When was the last time you watched a movie that was completely different from your usual fare? What kind of movies do you like? How do you know?
What kind of music stirs your soul? How do you know? Who chooses your music — you, or an algorithm (like Spotify, others)? How often do you listen to ‘that other stuff’?
As a culture, when it comes to personal taste, we tend to believe other people, especially some company’s algorithm, rather than ourselves. This bizarre phenomenon is recent; I pre-date computers, which pre-date algorithms, and I’m not history… yet. So, recent.
In an article in the NYTimes, “How to Discover Your Own Taste,” Kyle Chayka, a staff writer at New Yorker Magazine, talks about how today’s internet encourages everything to look the same and is even dulling our ability to know what we like.
He explains: “Algorithmic recommendations prevent us from being challenged and surprised a lot of the time, like everything is molded to our preferences that we’ve already expressed. The Spotify recommendations follow all the bands and genres that they know you like, that you engage with. We’re herded and shepherded toward experiences that we’re going to find comfortable enough.”
When was the last time you got out of your cultural ‘comfort zone’?
This move toward the ‘data-fication’ of our so-called ‘personal’ choices has only taken off since the 2010s, he says. There have always been things like the Nielson ratings, or box-office numbers, but never before did we see what he calls the ‘tyranny’ of real-time data. The forces that influence our ‘personal’ choices have shifted from human gatekeepers to a data-driven system.
This century could be called the age of ease. Search engines can answer any question you might have, on any topic. Zoom can take you to a meeting too far to drive to. Whatever you need, want, crave, desire is only a click away. But who monitors those clicks? And what do they do with that information?
It’s easy to find a movie to watch that fits our preferences — but almost impossible to find one that might surprise us, or take us somewhere we’re not accustomed to going. The algorithms know how to play music we like — but that’s not where we discover what we really like. It’s getting harder and harder to find anything that might surprise or challenge us. But that’s exactly what can lead you to develop your own personal taste.
The word ‘trending’ comes to mind here. What’s considered ‘trending’ — and thus immensely popular — in our culture seems to change daily; but that’s not how real culture evolves. Have you ever heard of Tchaikovsky? His musical compositions were often panned and ridiculed in his time. The literary classic “Moby Dick” barely sold at all during Melville’s lifetime. So many of what we now consider classic works of culture only took on their value with the passage of time, often centuries. As Chayka puts it, the cultural value of a work is not determined by “popularity or engagement metrics.” Quite the contrary; what we consider cultural value is “determined by slow word of mouth over decades and decades and generations.”
Generations. Not daily trends.
None of us will be around a century from now (probably), to learn which of the music or entertainment or other cultural elements we loved are still ‘out there.’ Beethoven surely had no idea that his little ditty, “Für Elise,” would someday become the tune that every novice piano student in the next century would come to love! Culture — the real, lasting stuff, born of genius — is not born overnight. No matter how popular something is, only future generations can determine whether it has the ‘right stuff’ to last.
So don’t let yourself be swayed only by what’s ‘trending,’ or how many people attended a concert, or especially by social media. A real cultural success has the power to reduce one to tears, or change a life, to foster surprise or challenge. It can change your brain, and bring joy, or passion. When you encounter a true gem, one meant to last and last, it will no doubt be an unexpected, and unforgettable, encounter.
The generic, however, accounts for most of the trends that algoritms keep track of.
And as Chayka challenges us, “why would you want to have the generic experience? Why would you want the lowest-common-denominator results of recommendation?”
Why, indeed?
I really enjoy reading your article on this quiet Friday morning. Thank you for sharing your thoughts. That’s why I love to walk into a bookstore or a library, wandering around, picking up a book, looking at the cover design, the fonts, feel the texture of the book, read a few pages here and there, …, you never know, I may bring one or two home with me, with that, the joy of discovery and the pleasure in finding a connection. The Borders bookstore at World Trade Center was my favorite. In the digital world, search engines are useful. As long as one is curious, we can wander and discover in the digital world. Reading comment sections is another useful way to discover new ideas, books, music …. I discovered your book when researching online after watching Free Solo. Lately I have been thinking about how we navigate through the era of AI. What intrigues me most is not what a new AI tool can do, but rather how it can trigger and encourage thinking into how human makes decisions. We need more writings like yours. Happy writing and sharing.