Algorithms are the secret recipe rendering unmanageable amounts of data useful to the naked eye. In fact, according to the Economist, a recipe is an algorithm! A recent article, pages 85-7 in the September 15 issue and dated September 13 online, entitled “Business by numbers,” provides an excellent overview for the lay reader of the various purposes to which algorithms are put: verifying credit card numbers (the Luhn algorithm); projecting shipping logistics at UPS; rerouting delivery trucks out on the road, internet traffic across the globe, and airplanes on the runway using real time optimisation; or detecting fraudulent shopping behavior.
Algorithms are also used to make sense of folks’ daily activities – yours and mine – and provides opportunity “to respond to each customer in a personalised way.” My grocer can compare my inordinate love of orange juice with those of other juice purchasers and soon get a pretty good idea of what else I might like to buy that I am not yet already buying – and pitch me with a coupon. Amazon now tries to get us to buy two books instead of just the one we were looking for. Search engines, like Google, where algorithms underpin every results screen sent us, analyze our every browse and click. The bigger the pile of data the more precisely can be the response – as long as the algorithm sorting works. The author describes the fine art of discrimination required in creating effective and useful algorithms. Just like recipes, they require testing. This is how “they” hope to get ever closer to answering differently and well for each one of us that all important question: “what should I do on my day off tomorrow?” (See previous post.)
Loyalty cards and logins help peel back the curtain shielding us from corporate prying eyes. So while tailored offerings might delight us, one should not forget the title of this article, either. It is commercial consideration ultimately driving business by the numbers.
At last year’s Off-Campus Library Services Conference in Savannah, Georgia I heard Marshall Keys’ attempt to disabuse us librarians in attendance about the privacy concerns of young library patrons in the online world of today. He entertained us with pictures of students with bongs, in heightened states of revelry, and the like – all easily garnered from the web. Many newspaper articles have since appeared about the imprudence of such displays when college graduates job-search the next year.
But this is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg. We give away a little with every search and online post. Carefully collected revelations about ourselves could feed the consumerist machine which will then ceaselessly throw back tailored just-for-us pitches. And who wants to lead the charge? Google seems a likely candidate:
“As CEO Eric Schmidt explained last May, ‘We cannot even answer the most basic questions because we don’t know enough about you. That is the most important aspect of Google’s expansion.’ He said that Google wants to be able to answer when users ask, for example, ‘the question such as ‘What shall I do tomorrow?’ and ‘What job shall I take?””
So Google wants to know enough about us to answer the kind of question we might ask our partner as we finish dinner or ask a friend what direction our life should take after we’ve settled in over a drink. What’s the likelihood, though, if it’s sailing we enjoy, that community sailing will be the top search engine response as to what to do tomorrow, instead of the Sailing Boat Show with a stiff entry fee? Madison Avenue is climbing on board and Google is luring them in – that’s the gist of Jeffrey Chester’s online article Will Google’s Greed Ruin the Internet? Chester is head of the Center for Digital Democracy.
Those dreamy fluid notions from a few years back of an alternative, democratically driven, and pure online world just seem to be slipping through our mouseclicks. A number of the posts commenting on this article suggested (pleaded?): don’t click on the ads! Well, somebody is – just look at Google’s balance sheets. Librarians safeguard the curiosities of folks from the questions asked to the books checked out. Need we, when everyone is already letting it all hang out and Google wants to be able to skip the reference interview entirely?
Attended the Boston Regional Library System workshop entitled “Libraries Designed for Social Sustainability” yesterday and found it to be exciting. The presenters, from Adaptive Environments, Inc., a non-profit soon to become the Institute for Human Centered Design, promote universal design or design-for-all. These folks pioneered many ideas about accessible design since their inception in 1978 and contend that design based upon universal principles can be dynamic, exciting and attractive. Accessible design need not equal dull. Inherent in the ideas expressed I found a civic base – a goal to serve all well. Valerie Fletcher, Executive Director, explained that “variation in human ability is ordinary,” not exceptional. The aging of the world population alone makes a compelling case for incorporating these ideas. There will soon be more people over 60 years of age than under thirty – which has probably never happened in human history before. Advances in neuroscience provide further evidence for, identification of, and understanding about the variability in human abilities.
In addition to an overview of these ideas about designing the built, communications, and information environments to accommodate the widest range of physical and intellectual human abilities, Valerie and the AE librarian presented many good and bad examples of design in public spaces, many within libraries. Simple ideas applied in advance and carefully thought out can greatly improve the usefulness of facilities and services for all users. As Valerie said at one point, the need to apply “caution tape,” as on the steps entering the atrium of a library, or signage noting hazards and obstacles present clear evidence of poor design choices. The folks at Adaptive Environments, while happy to help see that design meets ADA compliance standards, consider this the floor above which all good universal design should rise.
Were I applying such ideas to this post I would add some visuals and provide a spoken alternative to these written words!
