http://www.wired.com/business/2013/01/index-google-wallet/
Marc Freed-Finnegan and Jonathan, formal Google Wallet team launched a startup called “Index”. The main goal of Index is to help retailers to create a personalized shopping and improved customer service. It collects consumers’ spending habits and shopping preferences so that retailers can provide personalized shopping experience to their customers. Well, up to this part, nothing is new. Whatever Index does has happened every time I shop online.
But, I started to feel little weird when I read this part. “Thanks to Index, the next time a salesperson greets you when you walk in to a store, they might be able to actually help you find the same pair of jeans you bought six months prior even if they didn’t work there when you bought them.” If a stranger who knows my shopping history better than me comes up and say that I have to check some new products which perfectly meet my interests, I would feel really creepy and weird rather than welcomed.
I started to wonder what would happen if a web personalization involved more human to human interactions. And I realized that I actually cared less about any problem that the personalization caused when it’s done by computers. So, what if your search history is not handled by computers, but by actual people ? What if there are real people behind search engine system who decide which information will be shown to you ? Would you feel more upset or frightened when a personalization is done by a real person?
I understand where you are coming from and the concerns you have about personalization being done by a real human. I mean a real person, unlike a computer, has their own motives and ideas that can affect you in ways that a computer is not programmed to do. Personally, I am concerned about personalization and its implications regardless of whether it’s done by a computer or real person. Personalization limits the information we are presented, the choices we have and can even affect our worldview. If I go to the storeand the sales clerk immediately directs me to the dept where I bought my last pair of jeans, it is basically the same as my computer showing me pop-ups of the jeans I last purchased. Both the computer and the sales clerk are limiting my choices. As I said before, although there are differences in the personalization between clerks and computers, the result is basically the same. We should be weary of both. And I think, it is a mistake to think that one is better than the other.