At the recent Augmented World Expo, Will Wright–designer of The Sims and cofounder of Syntertainment–advocated the creation of what he termed "decimated reality" over the more accepted "augmented reality." The concept is one that every developer should consider.

We Need Fewer Bad Choices

In 2004's "The Paradox of Selection: Why More Is Less," American psychologist Barry Schwartz argued that while autonomy and freedom of choice are all well and good, the overwhelming number of choices available had become a source of anxiety.

Things have gotten worse (or, depending upon your view, meliorate) in the nine years since The Paradox of Choice was first published. According to IBM, ninety% of the world's extant information has been created in the by two years solitary. In this environment, is it whatever wonder that users feel swamped? Forget about a paradox of option; were Schwartz to write his volume today, he might be better brash to title it, "The Crisis of Choice."

The concept of "decimated reality" is defined well past AllThingsD, which covered Wright when he coined the term about two weeks ago at the Augmented World Expo:

By "decimated reality," Wright means technology that can practice fifty-fifty more filtering than the brain already does automatically, and thereby show less information, not more. So automobile commuters might have a filter between themselves and the road that blocks out all road signs except the ones that matter to them.

Of course, few would argue that the solution to information overload is less choice by itself. Rather, as Wright's more nuanced argument suggests, afterwards years of building up the volume of what scholar Richard Barbrook termed "the loftier-tech gift economy," technologists should straight their efforts towards helping us make sense of information technology all. What we need isn't anything to practice with more choices–it's about fewer bad ones.

Edifice A Reductive Aggregator

"The Net has evolved into a transactional machine where we give our eyeballs and clicks, and the machine gives us back advert and clutter," says Nathan Wilson, chief technology officer at Nara Logics Inc. "I'm interested in trying to subvert all of that; removing the clutter and dissonance to create a more efficient mode to help users proceeds admission to things."

Nara is one of a number of companies attempting to change the way we surf. Founded by serial entrepreneur Tom Copeman and based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Nara.me is a eating house recommendation site with a difference. Having received $vii meg in venture uppercase to appointment, Nara uses large data processes, combined with a securely intuitive neural network, to brand "brainlike" recommendations for its customers: wading through the "vomitorium" of online information and emerging with just the relevant pieces.

Neural networks are modeled on the brain, with lots of processors, instead of lots of neurons, linked past a network to comport the letters, which makes them useful for analyzing links between cause and result where the relationships are circuitous, unclear, or both. "What we've washed is to link together every restaurant in the cities we operate in based on their unique properties," Wilson explains. "There is structured data available concerning all of these subtle, merely quantifiable elements, and what we're doing is to alphabetize that information and build connections based on those properties. Through large-calibration collaborative filtering, we tin so single out the unique elements that people similar and dislike."

To envision Nara's neural network in activity, imagine a connexion graph on which everything is linked with primary or secondary connections. Adding "likes" and "dislikes" affects the relative weighting between connections ("nodes"), thus helping the network to grow and learn to reflect the tastes of private users. Recommendations are fabricated appropriately.

In some senses, Nara builds on the extraordinary success of startups like Pandora Radio, the automated "music recommendation" service which analyses songs based on 400 different musical descriptors and uses user verdicts on these attributes–also demonstrated through a binary "thumbs upwardly" "thumbs downwards" verdict–to further hone suggestions. Much as Pandora analyses descriptors like rhythm syncopation, key tonality, and vocal harmonies to brand suggestions, so Nara (which hopes to expand into other not-restaurant areas) currently uses elements such as blazon of cuisine, eating place ambience, noise level, and price.

One of Nara's well-nigh interesting concepts concerns what founder Tom Copeman has trademarked Digital DNATM: the user-generated profiles he hopes will help in the "building [of] an individualized, tailored Web for each and every one of united states of america." Copeman's vision for Digital DNATM is a data-driven, constantly-updating, user profile that could pb to a more than intuitive online experience. "From my perspective, the idea of a personalized Internet platform is all about putting the power back in the hands of users," Copeman says. "It'due south most getting what you lot desire, when you want it, and most the whole experience being on your ain terms. We're interested in architecting a platform where users will be able to take their Digital DNATM with them when they visit different sites on the Net."

Practise We Want A Personalized Web?

User data is a hot topic at the moment. While companies are non likely to stop gathering user data any time before long, a concept such as Digital DNATM could upshot in greater transparency when it comes to this information. turning the data that defines how we are perceived online into a one-stop-shop as transparently customizable equally a Facebook contour. Equally even the nearly casual of Net users get increasingly familiar with how algorithms and big data shape the information they're exposed to online, it is probable that more than will question why certain bits of information are presented, while others are hidden from view. "The solution nosotros came upwards with for Nara is chosen the 'why' button," Nathan Wilson says. "If a user clicks on this, it volition tell them what connections the neural network drew on to make a particular suggestion."

Nara as well offers users the intriguing ability to "mash upwards" their Digital DNATM with that of other users. Let's say, for example, you're off on a date and want Nara to recommend a place that will appeal to both parties–not only in terms of the food served, but besides the ambience, noise level, and (if you're going Dutch) price indicate. And so at that place is the possibility to "mash upward" Digital DNATM with a person we've never met, in the way that we might currently follow our favorite celebrities on Twitter. If we want to get relevant suggestions from a nutrient critic, why not mash our Digital DNATM with theirs, thereby allowing taste makers to aggrandize their reach into the online globe? Every bit Nara expands into other consumer areas, the potential for this thought grows exponentially.

Filtering the information that we receive online is always going to exist a dicey subject. For those in one camp, the very notion of what Barry Schwartz terms the "darker side of liberty" will strike them as apparently ridiculous. For these idealists, a truthful democratization of information can only be represented by the current fluxlike shapelessness of the Internet. Even an endeavor to list sites in terms of the value of their content (the entire concept of search) comes dangerously close to treading on toes.

Stop Waisting Time With Extraneous Options

The other military camp consists of those like Sarah O. Conly, Professor of Philosophy at Bowdoin College. In 2012, Conly wrote "Against Autonomy: Justifying Coercive Paternalism," which extends Schwartz's argument past suggesting that non only is the want for individual agents to human activity as they wish not desirable, it's not feasible. If we possess the means by which individuals tin can have their mental and concrete health and well-being protected–as in banning cigarettes, mandating food portion sizes in restaurants, or forcing people to relieve money and avoid running in to debt–and then Conly argues that this ought to exist enforced. To put this in Net terms, if the correct data tin can exist gathered and presented to the user based on what they have shown an interest in, why waste their time with extraneous options?

I doubtable that, similar me, the vast majority of readers will come up down somewhere in the heart of these two sides of the contend. Much of it is a thing of implementation. As has been much discussed, the filtering of information to personalize the Spider web can result in a "filter bubble" effect, whereby people are not exposed to views or information that differ from their own. Knowing this, the question then becomes whether the algorithms and information being used to carry out the filtering process are intuitive enough to counterbalance this effect.

Do nosotros gain plenty to make up for what nosotros potentially lose? A restaurant recommendation service that reinforces the same eating habits is as unlikely to succeed every bit a music recommendation service that fails to augment listeners' horizons past exposing them to new sounds. The Net every bit the information-packed jungle that information technology currently exists as isn't going anywhere. Just at the speed that the Net is expanding, if a concept like Digital DNATM tin can dip in and pull out the things that are most likely to interest me (the increased noise-to-betoken ratio that Will Wright spoke almost) and then I'm all for it.

After all, isn't engineering there to make our lives easier?