[amb23]

I blame it on quarantine, but for the past week or so I've really been longing to spend an afternoon in a library. They were one of the best parts of my childhood and teenage years: scanning a shelf and picking out something that catches your eye was a more efficient process, yielding more spontaneity and serendipity and quality, than the existing "recommended books" algorithms that exist on my library's online app. Finding books on similar topics was so much easier with the Dewey Decimal system. It's amazing to me that, decades into the information revolution, we still haven't been able to replicate the efficiencies of that manual sorting system online.

[iggldiggl]

> scanning a shelf and picking out something that catches your eye was a more efficient process, yielding more spontaneity and serendipity and quality, than the existing "recommended books" algorithms that exist on my library's online app

So much this.