Do You Really Want Personalization Technology?
I have mixed feelings about personalization technology. Like so many, I have over the years come to rely on an increasing number of smartphone applications to navigate everyday life and access culture. More and more often, these applications offer me individualized recommendations in the form of a “just for you” section. Personalized suggestions were fun for me initially. They’re accurate and convenient. At first they even seemed sort of kind. But the more deeply I think about those recommendations and the technology that produces them, the more I feel unsettled.
History and lived experience have long proven that lack of exposure to difference can have devastating consequences. The last seven months have forced many of us–particularly white folks here in the US–to wrestle with that truth, some for the first time. Failure to respect and engage with those different from us can rip apart families and nations. It can end lives.
It’s nice to feel seen, even by technology. When technology recognizes us, all of our preferences and our tastes, it’s a strange but pleasant feeling. Personalization technology learns what we already like, and using that information, it curates warm, familiar-feeling experiences.
There is nothing wrong with having people and things in our lives that are familiar. Personalization technology is a friend from the neighborhood–the one that came over to play after school and listened to CDs in the car on the way to sports practice. That friend is important and comforting. That friend is home. But home isn’t everything. Home is not the exciting travel destination we seek out to admire unfamiliar sights, or to experience a new culture and way of life. Staying home doesn’t challenge us to evaluate our thinking, call our existing opinions into question, or broaden our perspectives. It shelters us. It stifles our growth.
Algorithmic recommendations can of course provide value, and in some cases, they indisputably do. On food delivery websites, for example, recommendations based on dietary restrictions can save an individual with Celiac’s considerable time and energy. For the less technologically savvy among us, easily accessible personalized recommendations can make an unfamiliar interface much easier to navigate. When applied to health and wellness apps, personalization technology can generate helpful reminders that counteract the hectic nature of life and make it easier to stay on top of our personal care. An app like Zocdoc can suggest seeing your primary care physician or dentist if it’s been over a year since your last visit, mitigating health risks that arise from far-between check-ups. Personalization features have value when they serve our best interests and truly respond to our needs.
The question I keep asking myself is whether it’s right to apply this technology to everything. Should it be the default? And if it is, shouldn’t we be able to opt out?
The problem with algorithmic recommendations and our reliance on them — particularly in the context of apps that mediate our consumption of art and culture — is what the algorithms don’t suggest for us.
When I think of the art and media that have most changed me, or shifted my worldview, what comes to mind are the music recommendations from a friend who is in touch with their heritage and listens to its up-and-coming artists. A magical realism novel from an author in Japan that allows me to drop into a young man’s mind as he muses on metaphysics and examines the world around him. A slice-of-life film from Poland that explores a mundane but penetrating and ultimately universal problem.
Personalization technology does little to send us rocketing toward material that is foreign but captivating. In fact, by design, algorithmic recommendations filter these sorts of things out. Personalization technology imposes the narrow constraints of our personal preferences on the vast digital world.
Technology is a far-reaching and powerful apparatus. Conceivably, it has the capacity to widen our horizons, spur interest in new and unfamiliar things, push us to look beyond ourselves and our own personal experience. The tech industry, however, invests relatively little time and thought in technology’s potential to expose us to differences. Instead, we have Based On Your Preferences.
Technology companies are focused on maximizing time-spend and engagement, with no financial incentive to expand our horizons. A diverse pool of content could cause a user to spend additional time browsing and result in either lost interest or worse, preference for a competitor product.
What dangers are baked into the prevalence of personalization technology? This question, I feel, takes on increased importance in our hyper-polarized era and society.
Personalization technology encourages us to stick to what we know, even when that’s been shown, time after time, to be a dangerous practice–one that reinforces the biases we developed growing up. When we neglect to expose ourselves to opinions and realities that challenge our own, opposing viewpoints can grow so remote as to seem unthinkable, even fictionalized. In failing to seek out exposure to difference, we do a disservice to ourselves and to others. Questioning our own opinions, even when doing so ultimately affirms our original assumptions, is a noble and worthwhile practice. Technology could do a great deal more than it does today to encourage and facilitate that process.
Dedicated to and edited by Lindsay Szper.
