Recently, two new services have been announced: Google Now and A.R.O’s Saga. Both aim to do something similar: learn about the user’s behaviour and preferences and use that data to provide them with ‘just the right information at just the right time’. In doing so, these apps dramatically increase the personalisation of our everyday lives. And that’s not necessarily a good thing.
Google Now is Google’s latest effort in an ever increasing amount of services, algorithms and devices. Its goal is as simple as it is ambitious; provide users with the information they need at the time they want it, but without them having to press a single button.
Using location data, calendar data and web history, Google Now is able to update users about traffic jams on their daily route, public transit schedules for the nearest bus stop or live sports results from someone’s favorite sports team. In short, it removes the hassle of opening apps, sifting through information and spending valuable time looking for something.
At first sight, A.R.O’s Saga seems to be very similar to Google Now. That’s because both services provide users with personalized suggestions and information. Saga promises to do more, though. The upcoming iPhone app adds a Foursquare-like system of points and keeps a track record of visited places and past activities. Moreover, it’s able to incorporate data not only from location and browser history, but from other applications (such as RunKeeper) as well.
As we discussed yesterday, apps like Saga and Google Now illustrate a shift to apps that you don’t have to open anymore. Of course, privacy is a major issue at stake here as well. These applications collect data about our precise whereabouts and preferences constantly. Following recent outrage surrounding hacked user data, users might be hesitant to try Saga and Google Now.
However, there’s a more issue pressing at stake here. Services like Saga and Google Now also underline the personalisation of, well, everything. By now, Eli Pariser’s filter bubble seems to have incorporated almost every aspect of our lives.
However convenient this may be, there’s a fundamental danger to it as well. If a service suggests things to read, places to visit and food to eat based solely on our existing behavior, it inherently blocks new, surprising and – yes – unsettling experiences that lie outside our comfort zones. In The Filter Bubble, Pariser himself even asserts that ‘the filter bubble distorts our perception of what’s important, true, and real’.
Personalised and on-demand services like Saga and Google Now might some day provide all the information we need, when we need it. Still, do we always want algorithms and data to schedule and determine our lives? What about the joy of surprise, the magic of the unknown or the comfort of the strange? Those things may well be even more rewarding.
