feeling listless

Arts Lev Grossman encapsulates why I hate recommendation engines for Time Magazine:

"They don't take us out of our comfort zone. A recommendation engine isn't the spouse who drags you to an art film you wouldn't have been caught dead at but then unexpectedly love. It won't force you to read the 18th century canon. It's no substitute for stumbling onto a great CD just because it has cool cover art. Recommendation engines are the enemy of serendipity and Great Books and the avant-garde. A 19th century recommendation engine would never have said, If you liked Monet, you'll love Van Gogh! Impressionism would have lasted forever."

I want a recommendation engine to take me out of my comfort zone but they're designed not to. Which I why I allow the BFI to choose half of the films I'm going to received through Lovefilm each month and just yesterday added three years worth of Sight & Sound magazine's films of the month to the potential other half, an eclectic mix of Argentinian New Wave, Japanese relationship dramas and French socialist realism (or whatever). We need to be challenged [via].