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This reminds me of an episode of 99% Invisible [0] that I listened to. That episode also covered a bit about the history of indexes (which is relevant to the hi

This reminds me of an episode of 99% Invisible [0] that I listened to. That episode also covered a bit about the history of indexes (which is relevant to the history of alphabetical sorting), including how scholars feared and resisted the adoption of indexes. It was super fascinating and I highly recommend giving it a listen if you found this article interesting! [0] https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/alphabetical-order/ https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/alphabetical-order/

martyvis 5y ago
As soon as I saw this post I thought it that podcast. It was quite interesting how we take the alphabet as so fundamental. (And with a surname beginning with "V" I was always frustrated at school at being down the back of the line unless an enlightened teacher occasionally mixed it up)
mortenlarsen 5y ago
Thanks for that. Now I have 530 episodes in my podcast queue :)
- DantesKite 5y ago
  On a side note, I've always wish there was an API that could recommend media content. Like you could just plug it into any playlist of songs, movies, or books, have it do some algorithmic analysis, and spit out what you would probably find fascinating.
  - ghaff 5y ago
    You've basically described recommendation engines generally and they tend to deliver mediocre to awful results for a bunch of different reasons. I remember hearing talks on the topic over a decade ago and things haven't really gotten much better--and my sense is that most people have given up on actually creating a good engine.
    - bombcar 5y ago
      I’ve found much better results using your lists to find people with some overlap, and then looking at what they have. Which is basically what HN is.
      - timbeccue 5y ago
        Do recommendation algorithms not take this into account already? Perhaps privacy policies make it harder to automate this effectively.
        bombcar 5y ago
        The famous ones may, but it ends up taking into account "what do we want you to see/listen/look at" much more into account.
        ghaff 5y ago
        The original Netflix prize also, it turned out, wasn't really implemented for a number of reasons. But one of them was apparently that Netflix doesn't necessarily want to give you the best recommendations; it wants you to keep your subscription. There's certainly some overlap between those objectives but they're not the same thing.
        bombcar 5y ago
        They're also incentivized to show you things that cost them "nothing" or "less" than others things - and if they KNOW the things you'd like to watch it's better for them to string those out so you keep subscribed. The perfect Netflix customer is one always on the cusp of cancelling from lack of use but never actually does ...
        ghaff 5y ago
        In addition to the cost angle, they're also incentivized to push you towards exclusives. Things you can watch on other services (assuming you subscribe and know they're there) are much less of a hook to keep you on Netflix.
  - zdragnar 5y ago
    I remember when Pandora was attempting to compute the "DNA" of a song (assorted classifications like key, tempo, style) and recommend music based on that. You could then get a "station" based on a single song, and fine-tune it by adding more or disliking songs as they came up. The end result was underwhelming- it never really captured the characteristics that I actually liked about particular songs, and ended up being crappy or so narrowly tuned that it lacked enough variety to be interesting. The concept is still around, but with less scientific sounding fluff and, I think, more relaxed parameters for recommendations.
    - thaumasiotes 5y ago
      Did Pandora change at some point?
      - zdragnar 5y ago
        The last time I used it, I don't recall seeing the "DNA" nonsense, or being able to get a list of characteristics that they used to build a station around... It's possible that the interface simply changed and I didn't look hard enough for it though.
        nefitty 5y ago
        It's still using the same type of algorithm
        culi 5y ago
        Pandora is based off of the "Music Genome Project" which was a massive effort that took tons of music efforts to make happen. Experts literally sat down and deconstructed individual songs by hand and gave them tags. It's truly a historic achievement and it's almost sad how the massive effort mainly resulted in a private database that's primarily used for a failed Spotify competitor
        nefitty 5y ago
- xattt 5y ago
  I worked through whatever the length of the queue was in 2017 over the course of a summer and a long driving commute :)
- fknorangesite 5y ago
  It's a really, really great show. You won't regret it.
Alex3917 5y ago
There are still modern authors who buy into this kind of argument. E.g. the late John Taylor Gatto, who refused to use footnotes because he thought they made readers dumb. I forget whether or not his books have indices.
- gkop 5y ago
  Sorry to hijack you but I can’t help my curiosity. Index: 1) a pointer 2) a structured collection of pointers Indices: two or more pointers Indexes: two or more structured collections of pointers (Where “pointer” is used in a slightly generalized sense, like “reference”) Yay or nay, pedants of HN?
  - Twisol 5y ago
    "To index" means to point, as with your index finger. An index, such as at the end of a book, serves to point into the main body of the work. In this context, I think of an index like a mass noun; the whole thing serves the purpose of pointing, so one does not count the individual entries to quantify the whole. This is the same sense as in database indices, I think. I don't really make a distinction between "indices" and "indexes"; it seems more a matter of how integrated "index" is into English, since "indices" would be (I believe) the Latin pluralization, while "indexes" uses the more typical English plural scheme. They index (ha) the same semantic meaning in my mind. (We have the same issue with "appendix" and "appendixes" vs "appendices". It's telling that neither spelling bothers iOS as I type this.)
    - zarzavat 5y ago
      Then you have octopus with many plural forms: octopuses, octopi, octopodes (oct-oh-pohds, oct-o-po-dees), octopen, octopees, octopa, ...
1vuio0pswjnm7 5y ago
Imagine if we could sort Google search results alphabetically. Imagine if we could sort Facebook "News Feeds" by any criteria. How would this affect advertising. There is a book some folks mention written about alphabetical order. There was also a book written some years prior about the telephone book. Google has obliterated alphabetical business listings.
- webmaven 5y ago
  > Imagine if we could sort Google search results alphabetically. Imagine if we could sort Facebook "News Feeds" by any criteria. How would this affect advertising. AAAAAASEO.com will be the first result for every search.
  - 1vuio0pswjnm7 5y ago
    If the sorting is by domain name, I usually find 0 comes first. Something like 000000AAAAAASEO.com. There is now a .aaa gTLD. Perhaps they would cash in. Thus the first result might be 000000AAAAAASE0.aaa Sorting by business name might make more sense. Naming a business tends to rely on trademark law, which IMO is a better system for resolving name disputes than the ICANN domain name system.

martyvis 5y ago

As soon as I saw this post I thought it that podcast. It was quite interesting how we take the alphabet as so fundamental. (And with a surname beginning with "V" I was always frustrated at school at being down the back of the line unless an enlightened teacher occasionally mixed it up)

mortenlarsen 5y ago

Thanks for that. Now I have 530 episodes in my podcast queue :)

DantesKite 5y ago
On a side note, I've always wish there was an API that could recommend media content. Like you could just plug it into any playlist of songs, movies, or books, have it do some algorithmic analysis, and spit out what you would probably find fascinating.
- ghaff 5y ago
  You've basically described recommendation engines generally and they tend to deliver mediocre to awful results for a bunch of different reasons. I remember hearing talks on the topic over a decade ago and things haven't really gotten much better--and my sense is that most people have given up on actually creating a good engine.
  - bombcar 5y ago
    I’ve found much better results using your lists to find people with some overlap, and then looking at what they have. Which is basically what HN is.
    - timbeccue 5y ago
      Do recommendation algorithms not take this into account already? Perhaps privacy policies make it harder to automate this effectively.
      - bombcar 5y ago
        The famous ones may, but it ends up taking into account "what do we want you to see/listen/look at" much more into account.
        ghaff 5y ago
        The original Netflix prize also, it turned out, wasn't really implemented for a number of reasons. But one of them was apparently that Netflix doesn't necessarily want to give you the best recommendations; it wants you to keep your subscription. There's certainly some overlap between those objectives but they're not the same thing.
        bombcar 5y ago
        They're also incentivized to show you things that cost them "nothing" or "less" than others things - and if they KNOW the things you'd like to watch it's better for them to string those out so you keep subscribed. The perfect Netflix customer is one always on the cusp of cancelling from lack of use but never actually does ...
        ghaff 5y ago
        In addition to the cost angle, they're also incentivized to push you towards exclusives. Things you can watch on other services (assuming you subscribe and know they're there) are much less of a hook to keep you on Netflix.
- zdragnar 5y ago
  I remember when Pandora was attempting to compute the "DNA" of a song (assorted classifications like key, tempo, style) and recommend music based on that. You could then get a "station" based on a single song, and fine-tune it by adding more or disliking songs as they came up. The end result was underwhelming- it never really captured the characteristics that I actually liked about particular songs, and ended up being crappy or so narrowly tuned that it lacked enough variety to be interesting. The concept is still around, but with less scientific sounding fluff and, I think, more relaxed parameters for recommendations.
  - thaumasiotes 5y ago
    Did Pandora change at some point?
    - zdragnar 5y ago
      The last time I used it, I don't recall seeing the "DNA" nonsense, or being able to get a list of characteristics that they used to build a station around... It's possible that the interface simply changed and I didn't look hard enough for it though.
      - nefitty 5y ago
        It's still using the same type of algorithm
        culi 5y ago
        Pandora is based off of the "Music Genome Project" which was a massive effort that took tons of music efforts to make happen. Experts literally sat down and deconstructed individual songs by hand and gave them tags. It's truly a historic achievement and it's almost sad how the massive effort mainly resulted in a private database that's primarily used for a failed Spotify competitor
        nefitty 5y ago
xattt 5y ago
I worked through whatever the length of the queue was in 2017 over the course of a summer and a long driving commute :)
fknorangesite 5y ago
It's a really, really great show. You won't regret it.

Alex3917 5y ago

There are still modern authors who buy into this kind of argument. E.g. the late John Taylor Gatto, who refused to use footnotes because he thought they made readers dumb. I forget whether or not his books have indices.

gkop 5y ago
Sorry to hijack you but I can’t help my curiosity. Index: 1) a pointer 2) a structured collection of pointers Indices: two or more pointers Indexes: two or more structured collections of pointers (Where “pointer” is used in a slightly generalized sense, like “reference”) Yay or nay, pedants of HN?
- Twisol 5y ago
  "To index" means to point, as with your index finger. An index, such as at the end of a book, serves to point into the main body of the work. In this context, I think of an index like a mass noun; the whole thing serves the purpose of pointing, so one does not count the individual entries to quantify the whole. This is the same sense as in database indices, I think. I don't really make a distinction between "indices" and "indexes"; it seems more a matter of how integrated "index" is into English, since "indices" would be (I believe) the Latin pluralization, while "indexes" uses the more typical English plural scheme. They index (ha) the same semantic meaning in my mind. (We have the same issue with "appendix" and "appendixes" vs "appendices". It's telling that neither spelling bothers iOS as I type this.)
  - zarzavat 5y ago
    Then you have octopus with many plural forms: octopuses, octopi, octopodes (oct-oh-pohds, oct-o-po-dees), octopen, octopees, octopa, ...

1vuio0pswjnm7 5y ago

Imagine if we could sort Google search results alphabetically. Imagine if we could sort Facebook "News Feeds" by any criteria. How would this affect advertising. There is a book some folks mention written about alphabetical order. There was also a book written some years prior about the telephone book. Google has obliterated alphabetical business listings.

webmaven 5y ago
> Imagine if we could sort Google search results alphabetically. Imagine if we could sort Facebook "News Feeds" by any criteria. How would this affect advertising. AAAAAASEO.com will be the first result for every search.
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 5y ago
  If the sorting is by domain name, I usually find 0 comes first. Something like 000000AAAAAASEO.com. There is now a .aaa gTLD. Perhaps they would cash in. Thus the first result might be 000000AAAAAASE0.aaa Sorting by business name might make more sense. Naming a business tends to rely on trademark law, which IMO is a better system for resolving name disputes than the ICANN domain name system.