Tuesday, May 6, 2003

Recommendation Systems in 2003. Recommendation Systems in 2003 Source: The New York Times "Making Intelligence a Bit Less Artificial" Lisa Guernsey takes a look at recommendation systems being used by Amazon and others. Interesting reading. You'll also learned what happened to the Firefly technology after it was purchased by Microsoft. [The ResourceShelf] I'm a little embarassed to admit it, but I've found some of Amazon's recommendations to be quite spot on. Admittedly, this has required me to be proactive and remove the anomalies from my purchasing history. It also helped to tell them which things I already have and how much I like them. The question for me is whether it's worth it, considering how much personal information I'm entrusting to Amazon. Because I don't really trust them not to share it without my permission, And then there's the spectre of the PATRIOT Act. The information in library borrowing records is nothing compared to some of the goodies which might be contained in Amazon's customer profiles. These would surely be "business records" for the purposes of the Act. So why do I continue playing Amazon's recommendations game, knowing of the risks to my privacy? A part of me thinks that the damage is already done, so what does that it matter. Also, I'm too interested in this technology to be able to ignore it. 1:57:17 PM