It’s rather easy these days to arrange your life so that only those things of which you approve make it to your eyes and ears.
- Search engines boast of their ability to serve up the most relevant URLs.
- Marketers use data to make sure they send you ads for things you might want or need – and nothing else.
- iTunes, TiVo, Hulu, Pandora and others allow you to craft entertainment to your exact specifications.
- Caller ID and Voice Mail provide a shield from unwanted phone conversations.
I wrote about across-the-board individualization in a White Paper describing the Five Factors Affecting Your Future (March 2009) and explained that whether you like it or not, consumers have come to expect the ability to individualize everything, and you need to please them in order to keep them as customers.
But I wonder if we aren’t paying a price for all this?
Are we entering an age where the incidence of happenstance is so low that people never have the chance to experience anything unusual? Have we personalized serendipity out of our lives to the point where random discovery is unheard of?
You remember buying record albums because of a hit song playing on the radio, later to find that a track never intended for airplay became your favorite . And what about the joy of browsing the shelves in a bookstore with no specific title in mind, looking for something to catch your eye? Or learning about a great new product from a TV commercial you were forced to sit through during a show on one of only three network channels?
Don’t hear what I’m not saying – personalization is a great time saver and I’m all for it. But every now and then, do your self a favor and let something happen by chance. Who knows where it might lead?
