Well, What Would You Recommend?
When I was in graduate school twenty years ago, my big Master’s Project was to build a recommender system. As users browsed through the content (I used music albums for the proof of concept), the links would self-organize to make it more likely that the users would be presented with something that met their preferences. If you have some bizarre curiosity about how it worked, or if you need some soporific bedtime reading, the resulting paper is here. It’s the only academic paper I ever published.
It worked for shit. But in my own defense, don’t they all? I have never once said, “Listen to this awesome song, Apple Music recommended it to me!” Netflx has never proven useful at finding me decent content without having to wander far and wide through their catalog. Amazon has never turned me on to a great book that I hadn’t already come across elsewhere. Why is that? While ChatGPT can now write a Shakespearean sonnet about a sex toy in fifteen seconds, I still can’t get a decent book recommendation from an algorithm.
So here I am, doing it the hard way, asking one person at a time for their favorites. And I think this works better. With a human recommendation, you can see the person light up as they tell you why their favorite book is the best ever written. Even if you don’t agree with them, you can feel the sincerity and know that, under different circumstances, that might well be your favorite, too. As good as the machines have become, the sentient seal of approval has not been replaced.
My favorite book, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig, says this about quality:
“So it is not subject nor object, but where the two meet. In the Trinity, God is the Object, Christ is the subject. So maybe Quality is the Holy Ghost?”
An algorithm cannot be a subject, so there is nowhere for quality to meet its recommendation.
So keep on talking to me, folks. Keep those sparks flying, and let me know your take on what is best. One book at a time, one song at a time, one movie at a time, let’s write the scripture of quality as we see it.
