- Peter Lunenfeld wrote in his book The Secret War Between Uploading and Downloading: Tales of the Computer as Culture Machine- “All animals download, but only a few upload anything besides shit and their own bodies.” Through the use of suggestion algorithms such as the one that Netflix designed, users are essentially automatically uploading information every time they select a movie or post a rating.
My Facebook is able to tell me who I may and may not know. My twitter is able to show me news based on interests or previous activity on my handle. My web browser predicts what I’m going to search and gives me options to choose them before I am even done typing. My computer basically seems to know me better than I do.
Different social media platforms have different functions to me. Facebook is a social tool that I primarily use to connect to people, whereas Twitter is more of a place where I can think aloud in 140 characters. Through the perception that each platform can provide something different for me, my persona becomes depicted differently in each situation. In turn the things that appear on my news-feed or dashboard across each account are vastly different. Suggestions as a feature allow users to explore content that they may be interested in based on previous navigation, but arguably also restrict and discourage freely surfing other topics. Some apps and programs have taken this to the next level by completely abolishing the search function, and replacing it with ‘programmed content’ based on its relevance to you.
The app Yeti is an example of an app that shows you content, not based on search, but location. Evolving from its conceptual predecessor “At the Pool”, Yeti utilizes one’s location to generate a feed of content generated from other users nearby.
Sources:
http://yeti.ai/#firstPage/discover
Peter Lunenfeld- The Secret War Between Uploading and Downloading