Browsing 101

I’ve been working on framing content, delivery and medium for a training project at work and it got me to thinking (yes, I know, a miracle – very funny!).  Anyhoo, during the week long drive with Homer (not his actual name) I was reminded that the challenge of providing teaching and training for folks living with certain types of disabilities is really no different from finding ways to effectively communicate with gen X, Y, Z, etc. It’s about directing their attention to things that matter. And that’s not always easily accomplished.

It has become emblematic of folks under 30 – well, now under 40, I suppose – that their lives revolve around information that comes to them through various electronic devices. Of course, through any channel or device from YouTube to one’s personal communicator, there are seemingly infinite applications vying for one’s attention at any given time. And many of these seem to be in the business of truncating communication. (I could get all snarky here about a certain candidate’s penchant for using Twitter but the problem there is not so much about compression as incomprehension, so…  let’s just move on, shall we?)

In order to ‘access the information,’ one must first know it is there and that it is potentially of interest.  Communicators of various stripes have understood this for many generations.  From bills posted on street corners to broadsheets with bold type headlines, we’ve understood the need to draw the audience in. Book dust covers, theatre marquees and billboards all play to this need. The book cover fulfills two functions – announcing content and inviting desire. We walk into the book store, pick up the book we came for and then browse our areas of interest for covers that might pique our interest. And there’s the dust cover, trying its hardest to make us pause and pick up this book.

‘Browsing’ has taken on a whole new meaning for the digitally directed generation. Which books or other content is presented for consideration is defined by algorithms set up to predict your preferences, in order to enhance success of the browsing session. (‘Success’ being a subjective term – for me, it means I find something of interest while for the algorithm setter-upper and the site host it means  that I might purchase the item I find of interest – these being very different but not necessary mutually exclusive definitions.) But there seems to be an inherent limitation in browsing as our children are coming to understand it.

When one’s browsing is directed, even in a well-intentioned way by an algorithm set up to drive sales, it will necessarily tend to lead us toward those ideas or products for which it assumes I’ll feel an affinity. This is why I get so many popups for sexual enhancers and sports crapola. The algorithms have figured out my gender and age and probably a zillion other characteristics and have tailored their marketing to me accordingly. (Joke’s on them if they think I’ll ever voluntarily view a professional sports event and Casanova I‘m not, but they keep trying.)

To be fair, this was already a problem with the traditional book store, since we tend to look for what we already know we like – novels or historical fiction, how-to or new age. Of course, in a book store we have to walk through the stacks to get to our chosen area, whereas computerized shopping takes us as efficiently as possible to an item we might actually, you know, pay for.

Okay, enough with the rant. Where is this going?

I recently spent a week in a car with a younger man who by date of birth could be my grandchild. This is a guy who is very much in sync with the modern digital milieu and I worried about how well we would engage when his attention was taken up with the world as defined within a two-inch-square screen.

Turns out I need not have worried – Homer is a very interested guy, curious about more than what’s trending and willing, even eager to get out and look.  I am delighted to report that he spent more time holding his camera than his cell phone. He did a lot of the driving and when I drove all day, a misplaced charging cord ensured that his cell phone use was foregone for hours at a time. But I sense that even had he been the passenger with a fully functional i-Thing for all seven days, he would not have spent much time texting or trolling.

He wondered about farm fields and crops, animals we saw, geologic formations and towns and all the stuff that you see on a road trip if you just look up. And he found things of interest at every turn, as did I. We joked about our stops at identified oddities such as the UFO Welcome Center, but we actually spent most of our time noticing and discussing more mundane – and infinitely more fascinating – sights. The incredible straightness of a farmer’s rows. Why cattle on a beef farm are counted in pairs.  The architecture of a town, the number of churches, the sense of welcome (or not) we got from the places we stopped...

Stuff. Interesting stuff. Stuff that no algorithm would likely have led us to.

We truly had a wonderful time and I yearn to know that other folks his age would stop texting long enough to understand what they’re seeing.  Windows may be old tech, but they are a vastly underutilized tool, methinks. (That’s windows, lower case w, of course.)

My buddy Sheila frequently posts pics of her world travels and she’s quite adept at capturing a sense of place. I wonder how many people these days ever just turn around and look. Clue: It’s about the place, not about the fact that you’re in front of it. Take a cue from Sheila and think about what you’re seeing.

And I also wonder:  when eyes, ears and the tactile sense are all engaged by an electronic device, how does the world around us compete for our attention? Because to me, it’s far better to be interested than interesting, and I’m not sure the selfie-takers get that.

Anyway, it was a wonderful trip.

And I’m an old Fudd. But then, you knew that.