In between applying for jobs and working on my latest book proposal (working title, Contemplative Computing and the Goblet of Fire), I read Andrew Keen's article on social discovery and threats to serendipity. "Applying algorithms to the personal data on networks like Facebook and LinkedIn," social discovery apps "try to introduce us to nearby people whom we might like to meet—because we listed the same career on LinkedIn, say, or because we “liked” the same bands on Facebook." The problem, Keen argues, is they threaten to destroy real serendipity:
Reflections on serendipity
In between applying for jobs and working on my latest book proposal (working title, Contemplative Computing and the Goblet of Fire), I read Andrew Keen's article on social discovery and threats to serendipity. "Applying algorithms to the personal data on networks like Facebook and LinkedIn," social discovery apps "try to introduce us to nearby people whom we might like to meet—because we listed the same career on LinkedIn, say, or because we “liked” the same bands on Facebook." The problem, Keen argues, is they threaten to destroy real serendipity: