I can’t decide if this is a fail or not:
For those who don’t know, Managing Humans is an excellent book on management for computer people by the guy who runs Rands in Repose.
Sonic the Hedgehog is a video game character from the early ’90s.
I’ve had bosses in the past whose effectiveness would have been pretty much on par with someone playing Sega all day, so I guess they’re now vindicated, and my hair feels a little bit pointier.
Circa 1995, this kind of matching algorithm would be hailed as a great triumph. After all, they’re both books! Today, I’m left a little underwhelmed, and it’s not just from today’s example; some days I’m recommended a book I’ve previously read (which Amazon didn’t know, so it’s a good guess,) but other days it’s an obscure book on an academic conference’s proceedings. I get one of these emails every day, and it’s like a car wreck wreck on the highway: I don’t want to look but part of me can’t help but peek out of the corner of one eye. I can’t bring myself to opt out…
Now, let’s take this a step or two further. Amazon has an extensive API that gives access to most of the data you can find on its website. It’s probably one of the biggest libraries out there, and there are many businesses that have pretty much built their product as an extension of this service. None are big enough, yet, to effect the kind of change I’m thinking of, but as more arrive and as industry consolidation continues in the book and search industries (it’s never a monopoly because of That Guy in His Garage who could Change Everything in a Split Second of Disruption,) there may well come a day where an encoding error like this one (assuming this is an error; Rands and Sonic might go hand in hand) would ripple across the blogosphere (or at least the splogosphere) faster than a spinning hedgehog.
If that happens, I think it’ll be a 50-50 split between creating bestsellers and destroying an author’s credibility forever. Good thing nobody on the internet reads books anymore!
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