Preference Engines Side-Effects in Online Retail

jasonla writes "The Los Angeles Times ran a Column One article about the impact preference engines have on consumer buying habits. From the article: 'In the physical world, I bump into all kinds of people by chance. But online, if recommenders were perfect, I can have the option of talking to only people who are just like me. There's a danger that if we don't have some level of shared interaction, it can be destructive to our social cohesion.'"

Comments

Re:Perfect

[hungrygrue]

Liberal:

# Not limited to or by established, traditional, orthodox, or authoritarian attitudes, views, or dogmas; free from bigotry.

# Favoring proposals for reform, open to new ideas for progress, and tolerant of the ideas and behavior of others; broad-minded.

Based on those definitions, the alternative would seem to be group non-think. Actually I think that calling the majority of Slashdot posts "Liberal" is an unearned complement, most are far from achieving that ideal.

Definitions

[Descalzo]

" Based on those definitions, the alternative would seem to be group non-think."

I agree absolutely. We really need some more accurate definitions of liberal, and Fast!