Technology has the potential to make our lives easier as it reduces the amount of clutter we need to work through to access the information on the internet that really interests us. However, perhaps intelligent agents that make recommendations based only on what we and others like us have chosen in the past limit us, in that they reduce the chance that we will stumble on something (e.g., a book on a topic we’ve never heard of or a music group that’s different from the style we usually listen to) through serendipity.

Will the proliferation of “shopping bots” make our lives too predictable by only giving us more of the same? If so, is this a problem?

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