I hate Google Instant with a passion. I think it’s the scariest, weirdest development…it reads minds. I can type in “cof” and it instantly knows I’m looking for a Coffee Shop in San Diego.
Marketers, especially Digital Marketers, know that Google can do this because there’s an algorithm which determines search results – a combination of your past searches, relevant sites, popular sites, etc. Basically, the algorithm is a very well programmed assumption.
I know a lot of people love this, but I think we’ve gotten to a point where things are too intuitive. Whether it’s a search engine that predicts a query, a Netflix recommendation, or a car that can parallel park itself; we no longer have to think – technology does it for us. In the past 20 years, we have been exposed to an ever-increasing level of intuitiveness around us; and therefore, we expect and demand intuition. We want things to work for us, not the other way around.
According to Webster’s, the definition of intuition is “immediate apprehension or cognition without reasoning or inferring”.
“Without reasoning”? There’s a lot of reasoning that goes into creating those “intuitive” algorithms.
Don’t get me wrong, intuition is not a bad thing in the right situation. A seasoned business professional may use intuition to make a business decision based on his past experiences. An expert fisherman may use intuition to determine where the best catch of the day will be. And even still, there are cases in everyday life that one needs to use their intuition.
But please people, let’s bring a little logic back before we become owned by computers, and end up like “Idiocracy”.
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