SOS – Save our Serendipity! Part II

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Serendipity is our soul. Serendipity sustains us, it occasionally gives our lives directions neither planned nor anticipated, and serendipity opens up different avenues of looking at this world. As I will argue, without serendipity, life would not just be predictable, it would be excruciatingly boring.

Part I: 
Serendipity – the fine distinction between man and machine
(click)

Part 2:
8 reasons why a life without serendipity would be dangerous for us

1. Over-personalization gradually eliminates commonalities among individuals because in minutely tailored information environments, common interests and topics become rare. There is, however, a strong argument to be made that we need a foundation of common topics and a collective attention span devoted to certain issues. This holds especially true for our democratic processes that are critically dependent on these common informational foundations.

2. Algorithmic personalization may reduce our plural personas to one singular digital identity. Consider Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Facebook, who claims: ?You have one identity […]. Having two identities for yourself is an example for a lack of integrity.“ However, quite the opposite may hold true: This reduction may not be desirable and – to borrow the words of Amartya Sen – may sooner or later put us in an ?Identity Trap“, denying us the plurality of identity-conceptions and the ability to opt for more than one group.

3. The internet is just as non-neutral as software is. And this not only concerns access to the web, but maybe even more so the influence that large internet corporations such as Google, Facebook & Co. may have on our perception of the world, on our political opinion-making and on our participation in social life. ?Code is law“, as the American journalist and internet expert Lawrence Lessing observed years ago. We are gradually becoming the mere instruments of our online tools. In consequence, we no longer have the opportunity to be neutral, but become pawns in the ambitions of internet corporations and the world views of interest groups.

4. As odd as it may sound, personalization may transform citizens and customers into mere products. It’s not about offering the best, the most relevant and the most interesting to us anymore. It’s about how we can be instrumentalised to become efficient and individualized market outlets for economically or politically motivated information offerings. Today, we are being sold and brokered in the form of variable data sets between internet corporations and their business partners.

5. Without unexpected information, insights and encounters, we unlearn how to learn. In order to evolve as human beings, we need coincidences and random encounters with the unknown to inspire us to take new perspectives. It is a trait of a democracy and the obligation of a citizen to deal with things that are outside his or her own world view and surpass one’s own and often narrow areas of interest.

6. Algorithms have the tendency to counteract this, as they work like funnels that progressively narrow our view on reality, constantly offering us what we already know, like and desire. In this way, existing stereotypes and prejudices are being reinforced and amplified. If I once ?like“ the Facebook page ?Islam is dangerous“, I will receive ever more information with a similar political orientation and attitude. Do we really want this in a society where intolerance more and more prevails over tolerance?

7. Personalization leads to an uneven distribution of information and thus promotes a self-perpetuating segmentation into various social groups. If you purchase expensive products online, you will be offered expensive products in the future. If you check out a theatre program, you will be henceforth supplied with theatre related information. If you look for the website of an Ivy-league college, chances are that you will suddenly be provided with a lot of news on elite education. On the flipside, however, you are not even given the chance to find other information anymore – you will not even know that it exists.

8. It may be argued that the debate on anonymity on the web goes in the wrong direction. Of course anonymous online communication can be abused and there are indeed various examples of this. But the anonymity is in many places necessary, providing opportunities for participants to talk about their issues and wishes. The former Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, John Paul Stevens said: ?Anonymity is a shield from the tyranny of the majority. It thus exemplifies the purpose behind the Bill of Rights […]: to protect unpopular individuals from retaliation—and their ideas from suppression—at the hand of an intolerant society. “ Against this background, personalization is problematic: Not only does it lift the veil of anonymity, it also reveals a person’s entire personality with all their interests, preferences, and attitudes, thus forever reducing us to the status quo.

In part 3 I will argue why we should not stop personalization on the internet but rather shape it.