By Joe Banks
Art rocker and digital entrepreneur type bloke Peter Gabriel launched a new service this week called The Filter. As the name suggests, it aims to help people sort through the relentless blizzard of chaff that constitutes the modern entertainment industry and come up with stuff they like based on their personal tastes etc.
This of course all sounds mighty familiar – for example, Amazon has its recommendations function based on what you’ve either bought or browsed in the past. However, the problem is that these services produce suggestions that are often less than helpful, and are in fact usually just naked exercises in trying to get you to buy more of the same rather than expand your horizons.
However, The Filter’s aspirations are a bit loftier than Amazon’s. In fact, what really makes this announcement interesting is Gabriel’s talking up of the ‘life jockey’ concept. In other words, something that will take the strain out of actually discovering new stuff for ourselves.
Now, I don’t know about you, but my initial reaction to this was ‘not likely’. For me, one of the great joys of music, film, books etc is the actual process of finding things I like, particularly those instances when you make an unexpected connection between different items or get into something you’ve previously dismissed. The last thing I want is some clever clogs artificial agent telling me what’s hot in my personal world this week.
But then Gabriel quoted Sun Micro guru Bill Joy, who basically said that ‘the first wave is freedom of choice and the second wave is freedom from choice’.
Goodness me, that sounds jolly sinister... but you can see the logic. If we’ve come to a point where we’re so overloaded with entertainment options that we no longer feel we’re able to make an informed decision about what to watch or listen to, then perhaps having this choice made for us makes sense?
However, I can’t help thinking that this just another example of allowing our intellectual and judgemental faculties to wither just because what we’re presented with isn’t that easy.
After all, isn’t it true that you tend to get the most out of something when you put a bit of effort into it in the first place? Or am I just showing my age?
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