[mbrock]

There's a broad trend of tech companies disrupting traditional industries and then making rookie mistakes and generally not living up to the standards of the tradition.

Google, hire cartographers. Amazon, hire librarians and typesetters. Spotify, hire musicologists.

[sorbits]

Isn’t it more a problem of having algorithms do what used to be done by humans?

I.e. when you look at a Google map it is using the latest GIS data to construct a “good” representation for your screen resolution using your specified zoom factor and possibly even with dynamic overlays or highlights.

Likewise, when you read an e-book you can read it on many different display sizes, pick your own font, and font size. So where we used to have the book typeset once by a person, it is now done on-the-fly using user and device specific parameters.

The result won’t be as good as when you have a human do it, and even when a human does it, there might be limitations in the e-book markup language, just like with HTML.

[_delirium]

That's part of the problem, but you can at least design the algorithm with the benefit of expertise about how humans do it, either by studying the field yourself or hiring people who do. The way Knuth approached algorithmic typesetting is a good example.

[digi_owl]

Almost sounds like a Turing test all its own.

[vintermann]

Spotify, hire musicologists

Strongly disagree with that. For one thing, Spotify already has an army of tastemakers spending all day assembling curated playlists. For another, they have the Echonest data which relies heavily on manual labeling.

But the major innovation in Discover Weekly was to use machine learning directly on mel spectrograms to figure out meaningful features for human taste. They still want to rely on their experts as much as possible (and hey, I don't blame them for not wanting to fire people), so they try to combine their expert's features with the algorithm's. But this introduces human biases again.

The problem is that when it comes to music, everyone's a missionary. Everyone wants the world to listen to the music they are excited about. Professional opinion-haver about music is the dream job for many adults, much like chocolate factory taste QA expert is for 6-year olds. And they just can't separate their own opinions from objective truths very well. It's hard to be objective about something you love.

The real great thing about AI in recommendations isn't really the intelligence part. It's the "AO" - artificial objectivity. The algorithm is probably inferior to humans in some aspects (it can't interpret the themes in lyrics very well, for instance), but the advantage is that you have full confidence about

1. What information it actually might use, and

2. What it tries to optimize.

From point one, you can be sure that it's opinion on Smashing Pumpkins isn't affected by that annoying kid in 8th grade that used to listen to them. For point two, you can be sure it's really trying to find the music you will love, not what it thinks you should love.

To get it slightly back on track: I can't wait until an AI can do music history, or etymology, or economics, or history. Or matchmaking in dating! It will be useful long before it can match humans on intelligence. How great wouldn't it be to get results in those fields which you could trust were from a disinterested party.

[mbrock]

I don't imagine the musicologists charged with personally recommending music.

A more important task would be to restructure the "information architecture," for example to improve the experience of looking for classical music or jazz. There's a lot to do that isn't just based on opinions.

The dream of AI doing music history seems kind of bizarre to me... as well as the whole idea that human knowledge is bad because it's biased...

[vintermann]

Information architecture of music is what Echonest was all about, and I'm pretty sure they keep doing what they were doing when Spotify bought them.

To the degree that judging good jazz or classical is different from judging other types of music, I think that yes, it's based a lot on opinion. In particular the opinion of authorities - critics and other performers.

It's not that this is entirely unreasonable. With music as a social phenomenon, you might prefer to not be "into" the wrong kind of music, even if you would like it for the music itself. Spotify and Echonest have actually talked a bit about how listening patterns can reveal "shameful" tastes, different from the tastes we would like to project.

The job of a recommendation system then, if we should look cynically at it, is to show you the "right" kinds of music that you would like to like, but actually like too - and to not tempt you with "wrong" kinds of music that you would like despite yourself.

And yes, I'd bet you'd need musicologists (or human analysts) for that. It would by definition be very hard to figure out from listening patterns or acoustic features. But isn't this a bit cynical as I said? Shouldn't we try to not be ashamed of what we actually like?

[mbrock]

I'm basically not interested in automated music recommendations, and it's simply not what I'm talking about.

Categorizing, labelling, organizing, displaying music information is not about judging quality.

That aside, I also don't believe it's possible to separate a "pure taste" from a "cultural taste," philosophically.

[powera]

Why do you think they haven't?

[mbrock]

Well, I assume Google has a big staff of skilled people working on GIS, but I'm curious to know what kind of input they get from people trained in the art of cartographical mapmaking...

My hunch is that the tech industry is bad at taking advantage of this kind of traditional trade knowledge, and the essay in question here is an indicator.

As for Amazon, the Kindle e-books very often have horrific typesetting that would be laughed out of any traditional book printing shop.

And as for Spotify, their catalogue mechanisms and information design are clearly awful from a musicology standpoint.

[ehnto]

Something that has become interesting to me recently is the amount of knowledge about maratime weather and sailing that isn't readily accessible in a some kind of neat database, app or website. You actually have to talk to people and wander through museums to find out some of it.

It's an example of an industry and body of knowledge that still grows and is passed around outside of the internet.

Weather patterns for a particular area, places to anchor and dock, safe passages through reefs. You can't always google the answer and much of it is gleaned from other sailors who used experience and their tools to figure it out.

Having grown up pretty much constantly online, with the answer to any question I have being reasonably available with a quick search; that some common information about the world can still be discovered and shared is is really fascinating.

It sometimes feels like there isn't much outside of STEM fields left to explore.

[antod]

> Something that has become interesting to me recently is the amount of knowledge about maratime weather and sailing that isn't readily accessible in a some kind of neat database, app or website. You actually have to talk to people and wander through museums to find out some of it.

I've been online and windsurfing for decades and I've watched online info about weather/wave conditions at various locations grow then peak, and now it's been declining and drying up in recent years.

It used to be curated and published on websites and talked about in public discussion forums. Even usenet and mailing list archives dating back to the early 90s would appear in searches. In the last 5 yrs or so it's all been slowly evaporating into ephemeral Facebook group posts hidden behind a login form.

I suspect this is happening to all sorts of other communities too as they drop below critical mass. I'm not thrilled about it.

[jamessb]

Weather patterns for a particular area, places to anchor and dock, safe passages through reefs. You can't always google the answer and much of it is gleaned from other sailors who used experience and their tools to figure it out.

Lots of this information is collated in Almanacks and pilot guides (eg. Reeds Natuical Almanac and the Shell Channel Pilot for UK sailors, plus the books from the Cruising Association and Royal Cruising Club). There's not a lot of incentive for an online version, as the information needs to be accesible offline for reference and in case plans change. However, there is a lot of information in apps: there's an iPad version of Reeds Natuical Almanac [1], Imray has a worldwide Tides planner app [2], and there are apps with charts from both the UKHO and Imray [3].

[1]: http://www.reedsnauticalalmanac.co.uk/

[2]: http://imray.com/tides-planner-app/

[3]: http://www.yachtingworld.com/blogs/elaine-bunting/testing-ip...

[yardie]

The best application I've found that can be used offline is ActiveCaptain. The database is free and actively updated. The mobile app is garbage. An old Adobe AIR concoction that sometimes crashes or freezes arbitrarily.

Other apps I've used that have a slick interface are unfortunately online only. Which is useless to me. When I'm coming into a new, unknown, anchorage I need the information now, not after I've already tied up.

[wtbob]

> My hunch is that the tech industry is bad at taking advantage of this kind of traditional trade knowledge, and the essay in question here is an indicator.

As is the fact that other than Knuth, no-one seems to have learnt the first thing about how to lay out a page of text in an attractive fashion. And then even given Knuth, essentially no-one bothers to use his magnum opus (I honestly think that TeX is even more important the The Art of Computer Programming, and is what Knuth will be known for in two centuries).

[Pyxl101]

Does Amazon typeset the physical books they sell in their store? Should they be expected to typeset ebooks that they aren't involved in publishing?

[RivieraKid]

Lack of competition.

[Tempest1981]

Maybe the feeling that you are revolutionizing an industry -- which gives you contempt for those who came before you?