"’Niche’ culture permits providers to deliver targeted audiences to advertisers with enough exactitude to make sure that a twentysomething urban clubber seldom has to contemplate an ad for a DIY greenhouse or a stair-lift. Filterers and packagers devote their time and skill to guaranteeing that we never run across any item that surprises or intrigues us. If it didn’t sound too much like the sort of pompous Restoration tragedy that not even (BBC) Four would deign to broadcast, you might call this trend the Death of Serendipity."
[Boyd Tonkin, The Independent, 04.3.02]
Oh come on. This is lazy thinking. Niche marketing and new media doesn’t mean the death of serendipity (Tonkin wasn’t just talking about serendipity on TV). With increasingly intelligent/emergent systems, serendipity becomes a powerful slider control which could generate endearingly brilliant chance encounters (particularly with a couple of ‘editorial’ spanners-in-the-works thrown in to skew things – they are systems; you can do that). Again, the Echo UX and Kottke’s blogging discussion spring to mind. That and the fact that Tonkin clearly has a lot of nostalgia-fuelled angst to get off his chest. Lord help us if all he can conceive of "shaping the national chat" is television. Wonder what people did before they had ‘Dixon of Dock Green’ to talk about?