What's wrong with this picture?

jason's picture
Submitted by jason on Mon, 08/07/2006 - 11:38am.
Sometimes it's important to remember that computers are *not* incapable of making mistakes. Take a look at the following picture taken from my Amazon recommendations page:

See what's wrong? This was what Amazon "recommended" to me today due to the fact that I had added "The Charles Bukowski Tapes" to my Amazon wish list. I'm not sure how many of you are familiar with the writings or life of Bukowski, but let me assure you that Gerald McBoing Boing and Charles Bukowski having nothng in common. In fact, I'm just going to say that Buk fans are going to be highly disappointed with the works of Mr. McBoing Boing, and any parent reading Bukowski poems to their kids are probably unfit, to say the least.
I actually do find a lot of good recommendations through Amazon, but this is a nice reminder that it can just never take the place of human interaction. I get far more recommendations for good media from my friends (both virtual and real-life) than I could from any computer-generated list, and it's hard to see how a screw-up like this could take place anyplace else other than the bowels of impersonal computer code. I wonder how many patrons still go up to the librarian and ask them to recommend a good book?

( categories: Personal )
chadwick's picture
Submitted by chadwick on Tue, 10/17/2006 - 9:01am.

It is even worse for librarians who use Amazon for looking up info on book related to collection development. Our Acquisitions librarian gets all kinds of crazy suggestions based on her use of Amazon. You can imagine how skewed their stats might get if they don't consider these types of user behavior.

Chadwick Seagraves
IT Librarian
Marian College


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