A recent download of a new app ( Zite ) got me thinking about personalising my life. Zite is a magazine style app from Canada that personalises my reading material. Like the secretly guarded Amazon, Netflix, Google and my favourite Apple genius algorithms on intuitive additions and recommendations to your online experience, Zite figures out what I want to read from what I am now reading, what I suggest, what have read and what I might like to read in the future. On the other hand you have great reading aggregators like Flipboard, of which I am a fan, which compiles my news sources, putting them all together on the kitchen table so to speak, for me to browse whenever I have the time. Personalisation differs from aggregation in that it is more than just piling your favourite newspapers together, it is giving you one newspaper where you want to read every article because each has been written on an interest you have and topics that engage you.
So I'm thinking that I need an app I can put all of life's decisions into and it will decide and recommend life's directions, finance, entertainment and people options. Stay with me on this one.
So I have very dear and close friends and I'm thinking I could probably use some more, after all who doesn't need more friends. So feed them into the software and it suggests people to me that fit within those friend parametres that have taken many years to develop. If you like John or Mary then you will like Michael and Sue, so similar to the way Amazon has picked out some great books based on my past buying history, so I could find more friends via the personalisation algorithm. Takes the work out of all that first meeting, catching up at the next BBQ, then coffees, meeting their friends and on and on till you get to know them and like them and finally become friends, sometimes taking years.
Sounds a bit like RSVP but you could use the algorithm for anything in your life that you enjoy, have had success with and care about. When looking for that next house to buy, another coffee shop that will treat you like family, your favourite TV shows onto the best holiday you ever had, all continually personalised. Imagine watching just one TV channel that houses all of your favourite shows, watchable when you want, watch out Foxtel. You could get granular and take it down to your favourite cheese, your favourite pair of shoes or your favourite ice cream which could all be part of the "genius" algorithm to find those items and others like them to take the concern out of finishing that last cheese slice and wondering if you can get anything like that again. All of life's decisions big and small could be personalised and replicated so that you no long have to worry about whether you have to worry at all, about decisions on anything.
With this abounding satisfaction in always finding something to match your last favourite item, will we become slightly vanilla in our attitudes, emotions and decisions? Will we have no highs because there are no lows to benchmark against? Will our lives become a giant Facebook with thumbs up everywhere? Will we always be smiling? Starting to sound a little like a science fiction movie now.
On second thoughts I might just leave the genius to choose songs and let my personalisation device work on the rest of my life. We've all got one, it's the best around, it's called a mind and from all my research I can't find anywhere that Apple has duplicated it and put it into a nice aluminium design case.
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