In Search of Serendipity

I really enjoyed reading Richard Huntington's latest thought piece over at AdLiterate (always an excellent source of provocative thinking) entitled the 'Death of serendipity'. In it Richard posits the idea that proliferating choice in all aspects goes hand in hand with a desire to simplify and where possible automate our necessary decision making processes. Web 2.0, cookies, pvr's, RSS feeds etc. are all held up as contemporary examples of the tools and techniques we now deploy on a daily basis to sift through the 'noise' in search of the nuggets of gold. However an unfortunate consequence of faster, better, simpler he argues is that it removes the possibility of our making fortuitous unexpected discoveries the likes of which might once have more accurately characterised our past media consumption habits. In essence without random there can be no serendipity.

The article goes on to make a further point about the advantages of media targeting blur on the basis that a little sloppy targeting may not in fact be a bad thing because it's a way to create the possibility of serendipitous audience discoveries, albeit artificially. However my interest really lies with the principal contention above. From a digital perspective I've learned to love the choice that the web affords. Web 2.0 is embraced because the human participatory dimension and network effects mean that my content preferences are filtered on the basis of mass collective experience rather than mathematical algorithms as was once the case with search engines alone. So because I know where all my information and thus the basis for my casual decision making is drawn from am I indeed in danger of closing the door to random?

It is fascinating to me the idea that if we follow the current trend for more accurate and automated digital technology to its logical conclusion we'll reach a point in the not too distant future where some decisions are made on the basis of anticipatory learned responses to past activity. I recognise that we're getting into the realms of 'Semantic Web' territory here but imagine you are running late for the airport. Not only would your iPhone know this and so automatically rebook you a ticket on the next available flight, but it may even be able to pro-actively tell you where the best sushi restaurant is located in the departures lounge and reserve you a seat - after all you'll need something to do to kill time whilst you wait! This will of course been possible because your iPhone elected to search your Outlook Calendar and seeing that 64% of your past work lunches had been at Japanese restaurants it makes the decision that you must be a California rolls addict. The point is that organisational decisions like this could all be taken care of based upon artificially intelligent crunching of data and meta-data from one's past activity/inputs. It might therefore be legitimately argued that in our digital world if serendipity isn't dead it is certianly on a doomed trajectory.

Of course I don't believe this to be true. Instead I feel random and order can and do co-exist quite happily. Moreover I feel people are perfectly adept at juggling both facets in their lives. Take music for instance; we happily flit between the find and seek mentality of iTunes and the chaotic discovered delights of Last FM, or the Hype Machine. Why can't this exist across the board? Well I think it probably does, it's just that the idea of consciously having to create new technologically advanced ways of introducing random back into our lives tickles me somewhat.

Bizarrely this idea of constantly being in search of serendipity has I think helped shed light on my own experience. I think like so many other people working in digital (or maybe this has nothing to do with it at all) I've come to delight in analog too. For every faster, better, simpler advance we make I also savor the slower, worser and more complex things in my life. I think that's why I love SX-70 Polaroid and Holga photography so much. For all the wonder of multi giga-pixel SLR cameras there is equal delight to be had in accidental, unexpected, light streaked, vignetted, colour shifted photography too! For me at least the darkroom remains the perfect place to find my serendipity.