This Is The Saddest Thing About Technology That No One Talks About

There was a time when the content was not democratic. There was a lot of effort put into production. But distribution was almost dictatorial.

• Set TV hours for each show
• The TV shows were decided by someone else
• Their timings were decided by someone else
• Their content was decided by someone else

Same for movies, songs and news.

• No one got to make them.
• No one got to chose what to consume
• No 10/20/30 second edits – either you consume all of it or you don’t

People hated it. However, I can understand why.

So then came the biggest technology intervention that few talk about.

Personalisation

Content today is a reflection of your interests, your reactions, your engagement. It’s constantly tracking you, and delivering freshly baked content to appeal to your senses. To get you hooked!

Creating mini-you in the guise of that news item, that movie edit, that user-generated song, that viral forward. This scares me.

Personalisation is wiping out the ability for us to form opinions. Technology was meant to help us see things from a different point of view. Instead, machines are working to make us more and more enclosed in our worlds. Making us believe that it’s the entire world.

That’s why books are unique

A colleague mentioned this yesterday,

I love books, because they are not personalisedThey weren’t written for me. They were written by someone. So we have no choice, but to consume the perspective of the author. Accept or reject – but consume first.

Which is far better than being supplied stuff that endorses my point of view and never allows for a different one to set in.

Personalisation is not a boon

The more you will read, the more they will feed. You won’t become a better version of yourself. You will become an inflated version of yourself.

[This post by Ankur Warikoo first appeared on LinkedIn and has been reproduced with permission.]

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