When technology tries to tell you that you are gay, should you listen?
I’ve briefly talked on this blog about the PVR (personal video recorder) technology which has just arrived in Canada. This technology allows you to take control of your television by letting you pause live programs and by making it easier for you to record hours and hours of television shows on a huge hard drive. There’s also an interactive t.v. guide which will record some shows for you according to your previous choices. Some users of the TiVo technology in the US were surprised recently to find out that their PVR interpreted some of their programming choices in unexpected ways. They ended up tricking their machine by taping a few shows they didn’t really care to watch in order to convince the machine of their sexual orientation. One guy used this as an excuse to tape a lot of shows with naked women, just to convince his machine, which kept taping gay oriented movies for him, that he was straight. Read this funny article from the Wall Street Journal for more details.
Big brother is showing up in a lot more subtle ways than we expected!
