I use two browsers most days. My computer is a very inexpensive one and has limited capacity so I try to stay aware of how many page tabs I have open at once. Firefox is supposed to be rather independent and it is descended from Netscape, the first browser that really took me all over the web. Chrome is Google's browser and it may be best for the many Google services and products I use, such as Calendar, Contacts, Gmail, Blogger and My Drive.
Firefox has a new feature called Pocket. It features rapid saving and sending web pages of interest. On the new page tab, Pocket shows recommended articles, sites and pages calculated to be of interest. Lately, I have found that many of Pocket's recommendations are indeed of interest.
You may remember when Netflix offered a big prize to the programmer who could lift the company's accepted recommendations to a given target. I think I read that someone succeeded. Netflix, Amazon, Kobo, and probably others I am not thinking of, offer recommendations often. They are basically ads but some attempt is made, I think, to base the recommendations on my recent choices.
I am interested in the psychology of further choices. I am pretty sure that if I have just read an Agatha Christie novel, I am not going to choose another right away. But if you show me a book on evolution or gravity or Stormy Daniel's grandmother's farm, I might be interested. It is hard to say what might be of interest if I only know what I am probably not interested in. That position leaves open so many possibilities. If I am Netflix or Amazon, I will be tempted to look at the data on my recent choices.
I was charmed by Alexander McCall Smith and read many of his Botswana novels. I haven't even checked to see if he has anything written that I want to read. Recently, we seemed to have exhausted our Roku tv choices and Lynn suggested we look at the Doc Martin series and the Foyle's War series all over again. We watched an episode in series 3 last night of Foyle's War. We are both surprised at how little we recall from any earlier viewing. We are confident that we did see all the programs before but we rarely recall any part of the story. I don't think it is our age and memory power. I think it is simply number and time. We watched so many shows and so long ago that it is all new.
