The big payoff for the future will be in helping knowledge workers to be more inventive and creative, and to get those innovations into the marketplace. That's where a wealthy nation like the United States is ultimately going to have to seek its competitive advantage. |
There's a dark side. In the physical world, I bump into all kinds of people by chance. But online, if recommenders were perfect, I can have the option of talking to only people who are just like me. There's a danger that if we don't have some level of shared interaction, it can be destructive to our social cohesion. |
These phenomena are pushing the trend toward more obscure products. And that will feed back to what products get created in the first place. |
We're just being flooded with content. And people are increasingly relying on recommenders to help them sort through it all. |