Tuesday, May 8, 2018

"There's No Serendipity Online" - Inspiration and Wisdom about Discovering Books from Tom Cheesewright on Shelf Awareness



When thinking about the many roles bookstores can play (including community building, thought-leadership, and offering a safe space for diversity to be celebrated), this insight into serendipitous discovery felt profound and, worth sharing:
"Machines remain really bad at giving us a good discovery experience. The most sophisticated engines of personalization in the world are bad at finding us products that we don't know we want. They're good at helping us find things we absolutely know we want, and we know how to describe, but they're terrible at finding us those serendipitous discoveries, and human beings remain much better at that. It's why browsing a bookshop is so much a nicer experience if you don't know what you want, than browsing an online store. There's no serendipity online."

—Tom Cheesewright, an applied futurist, replying to the Bookseller's question: "If we're all reading e-books, is there still a place for bookshops?"
From the Thursday April 19, 2018 edition of Shelf Awareness.

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