Letting technology take over: the power and the peril

I will come right out and say that I am a huge fan of both Zite and Spotify: Zite for its ability to seamlessly deliver the content I want to my iPad; and Spotify for it’s ability to stream and discover music without having to use up masses of hard drive storage.

I find that Zite is particularly addictive, and it was so simple to set up with my preferences – by liking particular articles or blogs, it learns your interests and starts to push content to you that is likely to be well received.

This is really useful for writers who are researching a specific area. For instance, you might be researching artificial intelligence or the impending threat or opportunity of technical singularity (when machine intelligence surpasses our own), and Zite goes and scrapes all related articles and presents to you in an orderly list.

Spotify is similar in its brilliance. I could never be bothered to create different playlists, so would instead download all my music onto my player and allow Apple’s Genius function to take over. The software is fantastic at allowing you to create playlists very simply by detecting songs similar to the one you were enjoying at the time.

The issue, however, is that although my music collection is quite large, it still gets a bit repetitive. Spotify solves this by allowing you to do the usual playlist stuff, but also create radio stations of music you might like.

Discovering new music, articles and ideas using technology this way is exciting (and often time-saving). It’s a bit like trusting your satnav to take you on the fastest route to your destination, even when it leads down winding little country lanes that you would never have chosen otherwise. Even though I do sometimes wonder if it actually was the fastest route, I know I have seen some amazing places and scenery on my travels as a result.

However, there is a potential downside that we need to bear in mind: while being presented with more information is arguably better, presenting us with more of the same of what we want/like can be an insidious form of censorship, albeit self-imposed.

And while it’s most obvious with articles that have a political angle, it applies to all media as a certain point of view or preference is reinforced many times over through these apps. The unwary might start to see this as mainstream thinking, because other views are absent. At the extremes, it is not unlike living within the confines of a cult or extremist religion where their ideas are reinforced through repetition and perceived authority.

That all being said, if you are very busy (or just plain lazy!) and guard against the downsides, the likes of Zite and Spotify are just the ticket.