The Tyranny of Algorithm.

Because I read so widely (at least by my estimation) and get book reviews from a variety of sources (the Times, the Journal and the Economist) I rarely take a reading recommendation from either friends or the amazonian algorithms that have grabbed control over our discretionary spending. (amazon pays a smaller percentage of its revenue in taxes than your neighborhood bodega. You probably pay tax at about a 50% rate. jeff bezos pays less than 1/50th of that, about a 1% rate. See those synthetic breasts below? Your tax dollars at work.)

Taxes aside (if you believe as I do in systems collapse owing to major amounts of money not being taxes, you can't really put taxes aside. So consider that a drf--dumb rhetorical flourish) taxes aside, there's something solipsistic or naval-gazing or creativity destroying about amazon using their sophisticated prediction engines to recommend your next book, blouse or sex toy.

It means you're being guided, in a closing of your mind sort-of-way, by a recency bias without even being aware of it. The restaurant equivalent would be ordering chicken parmesan on Tuesday, then getting recommendations every subsequent meal time for chicken pecorino, chicken granaa padano, chicken asiago and so forth.

In short, a persuasive prediction engine is an imagination-and- try-new-things-limiting mechanism that rewards you (with ease and comfort) for never leaving your ease-and-comfort-zone.

I am amazed about 92 times a month how a word or phrase I've pretty much never used or heard in my entire life becomes just about the only word or phrase we hear in the course of a day. 

I wouldn't be surprised if the first words uttered by my younger grandson who's turning one in a few weeks, were, "this is a deliciously robust, agile and well-curated bottle of apple mush. I'm glad you bought it from a digital-first grocery and received the appropriate loyalty reward points which you can redeem for valuable prizes. Blackout dates and terms and conditions apply. Do not try this at home. Past performance is no guarantee of future results. Professional driver closed course. Also use under adult supervision. Do not operate heavy machinery."

This algorithmic hijacking, of course, is a huge detriment to our society and our industry. Orwell's "Newspeak" after all, was conceived as a controlled language that deliberately limited vocabulary size. Fewer words limit the complexity of thought and by eliminating words that can express dissent or complexity you encourage obedience and one of the great words of our modern era: compliance.

In advertising we limit our creative thinking to what we've seen before. If we're ambitious we seek to copy last year's cannes winners. If we're not ambitious, we copy last year's pharma ad or toyotathon. 

2026 award winners look like 2025 award winners look like 2024 award winners. As in the Marvel "universe," the sequels are here.

Not only to we live and breathe unaware of the crushing effects on creativity of the recency bias, the algorithm is so almighty, we can barely escape it. Using book-choice as an example, there's likely no difference between the selections at amazon and barnes and ignoble, and independent stores (like independent thought) have been crushed by our need to save 12-cents and speedy delivery. 

As somewhat of an aside, amazon offers for sale over 600,000,000 items. But I'd imagine if past Pareto is any guarantee of current performance, a couple hundred of those 600,000,000 items make up a good 80% of amazon's sales.

What's happening is bad.

Almost all human flourishing in the roughly 15,000 years of human history came from the free-exchange of ideas, technologies and methods. The Greeks wouldn't have produced Aristotle, Euripides, Aeschylus and Sophocles if they hadn't swiped wholesale the phonic scribblings of Phoenician merchants. 

I suppose this is a roundabout way of suggesting that you put your phone, computer, tablet, implants, glasses etc. away for a couple hours a day. Take a walk to someplace you've never been. Talk to a stranger. And try something new. 

Or old.

Anything but another recent.