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Written by Greg Linden
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Saturday, 17 December 2005 |
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 I love Paul Kedrosky's recent post about the three reasons trying to "change the world on the back of altered user behavior" will fail:
1. People are lazy
2. People are lazy
3. People are lazy
Paul goes on to say that "intelligence belongs in the network and in the algorithms" and "relying on users to do the heavy lifting -- however intellectually appealing -- is not going to work in the real world of lazy users who see little in it for them."
People are lazy, appropriately so. If you ask them to do work, most of them won't do it. From their point of view, you're only of value to them if you save them time.
If any work is going to be done, it's going to have to be done by a computer, not a person. People expect you to just make the right thing happen.
This is why Findory works the way that it does. No login, no configuration. Just read articles. The site learns from the articles you read and recommends other articles. The computer does all the work. It is simple, easy, and helpful.
See also my previous post, "Personalized search at PC Forum", where I describe the debate between A9 CEO Udi Manber, who claims searchers need to learn how to use more powerful tools, and Google's Marissa Mayer, who says people just want to quickly and easily get the information they need.
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