FLM

Serendipity 2.0

Hans de Zwart and I write a monthly series titled: Parallax. We both agree on a title for the post and on some other arbitrary restrictions to induce our creative process. This time we decided to try and find out whether it is possible to engineer serendipity on the web. The post should start with a short (max. 200 words) reflection on what the Internet has meant for serendipity followed by three serendipitous discoveries including a description of how they were discovered. You can read Hans’ post with the same title here.

Serendipity and the Internet

First of all, I think serendipity cannot be engineered. I strongly think that serendipity is a mindset. To illustrate that, I’d like to compare serendipity to humor. Humor cannot be engineered either. You cannot learn to be funny, you cannot go to humor school. Humor is merely a sense of timing and looking at things from a different perspective.

Same with serendipity. I’m sure Pasteur was not the first to accidently inject spoiled bacteria into test animals. But apparently he was the first to notice that the side effect of the chickens not getting sick anymore might be related to ‘spoiledness’ of the bacteria.

What I think the Internet has done for serendipitous minds. is leverage the impact of single serendipitous discoveries into whole strings or chains of discoveries because of it’s strong network effects.

A second effect of the Internet is that it has provided the lucky few with an enormous new source of serendipitous opportunities. Serendipity is favoured by the amount, richness, and pluriformity of events. The Internet did all three of these things: it increased the amount, richness and pluriformity of events.

Music

So, somewhere in 2008, at the bar of the biking club I learn that one of my biking friends has a similar musical taste as me and he is a huge fan of the Melvins, whom I did only know by name by then. So I order a pile of their CD’s from some Internet shops and I find out that their latest efforts are released by Ipecac, the label of Faith No More frontman Mike Patton, who also did vocals on one of my favourite Dillinger Escape Plan releases. Via his wikipedia page I come across his gazillion side projects among which Moonchild, with John Zorn, who also released a really nice CD with a reinterpretation of Ornette Colemans work, the pioneer free jazz saxophone player. Moonchild was partly inspired by the works of Aleister Crowly, who was also a main source of inspiration for Current 93, a British experimental group which is closely related to Nurse With Wound, a project which I was notified of by my good friend Seiya from Japan who stayed with me last month and who played guitar for Naiad, a Kyoto band which I found with Google in 2001.

I can spend hours hopping from related band to related genre to related artist to related producer to related influence etc on last.fm, wikipedia or myspace.

The Internet has tremendously increased the speed with which these kind of chains grow.

Tumblr

Tumblr, I even forgot how I found it but it came as a huge surprise to me. It’s one of those Internet things which you don’t know about but seems to have millions and millions of subscribers and followers. I love it. The interesting thing is that tumblr itself (I like to view it as a twitter on steroids) is a tremendous source of serendipity. Via tumblr I found fffound, visualizeus and many other interesting pages, blogs and aggregation sites.

Mobile Internet

In February 2010 I visited my first real geek conference with Hans in Brussels (which in itself can be seen as the result of a serendipitously driven chain of events). In the evening I was browsing the neighbourhood map on my phone and found a really nice restaurant just a few blocks away of our hotel, which we surely wouldn’t have found otherwise. In contrast, the next day we used some old school serendipity to find a good place to have some breakfast coffee and a croissant: drive around randomly until you find an open bar. Both ways work and produce satisfying results. It’s just that the Internet, and in this case the mobile Internet, adds opportunities and lowers thresholds.

closing remark: the intro uses ‘the web’ and ‘the Internet’ as synonyms. A recent article by Wired editor in chief Chris Anderson argues differently (recommended read).