• THE SERENDIPITY DEBATE CONTD

    ~ Posted by Ian Leslie, January 23rd 2012

    I'm delighted to see how many responses there have been to my piece on serendipity, here and on Twitter, since it went online. Some of you said that you shared the concerns it raises over the way the internet has developed. Others disagreed, often fervently, arguing that the internet is the greatest serendipity machine ever invented. I find myself agreeing with both sides.

    My piece was rooted in the ideas of one of our most thoughtful and perceptive thinkers on technology, Ethan Zuckerman. But for an eloquent account of the opposite case, you can read another great writer on technology and culture, Steven Johnson. In his book, "Where Good Ideas Come From", Johnson argues that the web is the structural embodiment of serendipity. For the first time in history, the world's information is available to anyone, and you can wander through it in any fashion you choose. Everything connects to everything else: all you have to do is follow the links, or the conversations, and who knows where you'll end up? In a recent blog post, Johnson recounted an intellectual journey of his that took the form of just such a peregrination. He concluded, "People who think the Web is killing off serendipity are not using it correctly".

    I mostly agree with this. But I think the rub is in that word "correctly". You can use the internet as a serendipity machine, but the way that it has developed—the awesome efficiency of Google search, the increasingly sophisticated filters through which we access news, culture and information—is making it easier and easier not to.  read more »


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  • THE SERENDIPITY DEBATE

    ~ Posted by Simon Willis, January 20th 2012

    Ian Leslie's piece about serendipity defines it as a “subtle blend of chance and agency” that leads to new discoveries. He argues that this enriching quality is under threat from the internet, where “we have our paths, our bookmarks and our feeds and we stick closely to them.” 

    The debate continues on our comment thread. Bioemeritus writes, “I discover more things that I am ‘barely aware’ of on accumulator sites like Arts & Letters Daily or the Daily Beast than I have ever discovered in my 68 years in any newspaper other than the New York Times. And it is a lot easier to do so than hauling the Times around.” 

    Leslie also sees a major site like Amazon as an enemy of serendipity. “Wander into a bookshop in search of something to read: the book jackets shimmer on the table, the spines flirt with you from the shelves…You may not find the book you wanted, but you will walk out with three you didn’t." 

    Will Wedin disagrees. “Bookstores provide a limited selection, favor book covers to reader reactions, and provide far less information on the relatedness of books than Amazon does. Why would I ever go back to that?”

    Perhaps the amount of serendipity in your life depends most on where you live. Donna Erickson writes, “Certainly if you live in a dense and varied city, such as certain parts of Manhattan, it’s possible that the outside world will give you the chance to encounter a variety of unanticipated interests. But on the internet, such density of opinion, and variance of taste and interest is everywhere.”  read more »


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