where are we going? September 1, 2006
Posted by kieslinger in : Uncategorized , trackbackIn the very near future, your PC will learn what you want by tracking your online activities and what you do at your computer, then use the Internet and the interests of other people like you to try to fulfill all your wishes.Limited glimpses into that future are possible now. One example that came to my attention today is a new service called Tourb.us (“Tourbus” using the URL http://tourb.us). ..
….What intrigues me about all this is what is suggests for the future. Imagine this sort of software, but will additional development that would enable it to monitor not just iTunes, but everything on your system — and find not just concerts but any sort of event. Combine that with existing collective intelligence engines (like Amazon.com, Digg, etc.) and existing learning mechanisms (like StumbleUpon, etc.) and you would have an artificial intelligence concierge that would scan the Internet, doing your bidding, finding articles, telling you about things you’re interested in and always learning about what you want and don’t want.
I just came across this article when browsing through Erik Duval’s weblog and I must say that it does not impress me too much what some people envision here for the future. Actually this sounds to me as a step back again. I have never been really fond of too much personalisation in terms of automatic tracing of everything I automatic push content. Just because I selected once a green shirt does not mean that I will always like green shirts.
One of the implications that we were all suffering from since the latest ICT developments is the continous information overfow. And he we are again,going exactly into that direction. When I read here that everything on my system will be monitored and I would continously get offers from Amazon to buy this and that and at the same time I will receive tons of offers from hotels in Barcelona, just because I am planning to go there in a month….. I will need a lot of filtering again in order not to be completely overloaded again with information.
Since I sometimes do not even know myself what I want it will be very hard for the system to always learn what I want.
Hey, I think that there must be more intelligent and human-centred challenges out there that these technologies will be able to do for us. Something more in terms of social innovation….
technorati tags:innovation
Comments»
[...] a follow-up on my post on the future of Web 2/3.0 and my arguments on applying social software in areas that support a social, ecological and economical sustainable development of our society. Alhough Web 2.0 is brining forward a structure of networked individualism I would like to see the stress here on the network, not only on the individual. [...]
Of course, we may be able to put these technologies to use to do exactly what you want, i.e. to make sure that you get LESS adds for things you don’t want!
BTW, maybe you’re not the only one who doesn’t want to buy green T-shirts only, and maybe we can find this out by tracking what people do.
I think you misunderstand the goal of much of this work, and I think you underestimate what can already be done today – which doesn’t mean that your concerns are not valid: they are and we try to address them…
well, I do of course not know everything that can already be done today. I did mention however a view projects in a recent post where Web 2.0 technology is used for social benefit: http://barbarakieslinger.zsi.at/?p=28
and I am sure that there is much more going on.
However, I do miss this discourse e.g. in our TEL community. What are the social/societal problems that we are addressing?
Sounds good if you also want to enter this discussion and address these questions.