chapter eight
8 The unreasonable effectiveness of engagement
This chapter covers
- Psychological factors at play when interacting online
- Technological characteristics of recommender systems that contributed to their societal impact
- Societal and historical factors in which the technology emerged
The fall of the Berlin Wall, the slot machine, and the ability to find hidden correlations are only a few of the reasons why engagement-based recommender systems are so effective and have made the platforms behind them so successful. Only focusing our discussion on technical factors, and ignoring the broader context, including the users of the technology and the historical time in which it was developed and deployed, misses the very socio-technical aspects of examination that we have sought to highlight throughout this book.