Bad Algorithm

I use Amazon a lot, as there's only a Waterstone's in my town. Yet I really, strongly resent their automated recommendation e-mails, which purport to 'know' my tastes, yet are usually way off the mark.

I once got an e-mail from it on Valentine's Day starting with the words 'Dear customer, Amazon loves you'. Really? Do you think that I'd have acquired a girlfriend that year by sending her a card reading 'Dear single female, Vole loves you. Send some money and something approaching sentiment can be arranged?'. After all the money I've spent at Amazon, you'd think they'd know my name by now. I bet even prostitutes can do better than that.

It didn't help that I used Amazon to look up the ISBN for Katie Price's Pony Care book (a present, before you ask), and now receive an awful lot of promotional offers on books by or about Katie Price and/or horses.

Today's missive somehow decided that because I bought a book on Prime Ministers and the media, logically my next read should be one on genealogy. Well, it's all words… And I've never heard of the Sunday Times Oxford Literary Festival. Surveillance - they can watch us all the time, but they can never know us.

As someone who has purchased or rated Where Power Lies: Prime Ministers V the Media by Lance Price or other books in the Content Stores > The Sunday Times Oxford Literary Festival 2010 category, you might like to know that Nick Barratt's Beginner's Guide to Your Ancestors Lives will be released on 18 March 2010