Romanticizing Serendipity
Miriam Meckel defined serendipity thus: “Serendipity is involved when we enter a book store and stumble on a random book that we would have never read, had it not been in the right place at the perfect time. It is serendipity, when we browse through a newspaper report and suddenly find ourselves riveted by its content even though we were neither interested nor familiar with the topic only minutes ago.” In the digital age, Google has been accused of killing serendipity in two ways. First, since it can find whatever you query for, it inevitably reduced random, aimless browsing that in turn meant lesser odds of stumbling onto something interesting by accident. Second, as Google stored more and data about people, it started tailoring its results based on your past history, to show you what you liked (clicked) in the past. The latter is what Meckel criticizes the second aspect: “It’s a life in the rear view mirror. The algorithms which compute all these recommendations and sugges...