My mother used to drop me off at the library as a child so I could spend hours among the book stacks.

Aside from the obvious fact (looking back at it now) this was an opportunity for her to get rid of me guilt free for an extended period, it was also my time to explore and discover.

One time, although I had no interest in basketball, I picked up a copy of “Two Peach Baskets,” the story of James Naismith and the invention of the sport. I have no idea why I read it, but I did and enjoyed it.

Another time some random person offered me Terry Goodkind’s, “Wizard’s First Rule.” He said if I had any interest in fantasy (at the time, it was minuscule), this would be the book to read.  That book wound up as my gateway into being a huge fantasy lover.

My love of diverse reading came from just randomly walking among the stacks and plucking out books that seemed interesting. There was no rhyme or reason, just a natural curiosity about the world.

Up until my senior year high school, I had little taste in music. What I liked was pretty narrow and based on what was on the radio.

Then one day I got into my buddy’s car and he was listening to the hip-hop album, LiquidSwords. Me and hip-hop were far apart on the spectrum of understanding, but listening to that album brought us together.

Until I moved to Ottawa, I had no idea what a shawarma was or what good Asian cuisine tasted like. I even hated steak without realizing the reason was my parents overcooked it whenever they made it… and the prospect of asking for it anything other than well done frightened me (I’m a medium-rare kind of guy now).

I’ve recently made the jump from avid Religion scholar to pure Mathematics student and loving it.

On the note of Religion scholar, there have been a few popes (Benedict being the recent one) who were ultra-liberal until they witnessed an event that suddenly swung them the opposite way. It was, literally, an overnight change.

Converts to (or from) religion also act in this way.

An algorithm doesn’t want you to take risks. It can’t place you into the unknown and hope you will like what you find there.

All it can do is read a decision tree and offer a suggestion based on where you’ve been and where others like you have gone. It nudges you into something already familiar.

It can’t open you up to an experience of something different… something new… because it would fail in its duty. Its job is not to make you happy, but comfortable your next decision will be a safe one.

An algorithm denies you the pleasure of leaping into mystery and finding joy.