Some time ago, I noticed something that at first seemed so insignificant that I barely gave it any thought. I was sitting in front of my screen, drifting through music, books, videos and posts. Much of it genuinely appealed to me. It matched my interests, my previous searches, my habits and, apparently, the things I had spent more time engaging with in the days before. Everything felt remarkably well suited to me. But at some point, I realised that I was hardly searching for anything myself anymore. I no longer had to think about what I wanted to listen to, which subject interested me or where my curiosity might lead. It was already being offered to me. Before a desire of my own had even fully formed, the next suggestion was already waiting. That was the moment I began to wonder whether the algorithm was simply showing me my taste, or whether it had already begun to help shape it.
I remember a time when discoveries far more often arose by chance. You would go into a bookshop and pick up a book because something about the title spoke to you. You would hear a song somewhere without knowing what it was called and later try to find out who it was by. You might turn down a street even though you had no reason to be there, or stop in front of a shop window because something caught your attention. They were not remarkable events, and perhaps that is precisely why I look back on them so fondly now. Between what I already knew and what I encountered, there was an open space. No one had calculated beforehand how likely I was to enjoy something. I was allowed to be surprised. I was allowed to find something dull, misunderstand it, be wrong about it or suddenly become fascinated by something I would never have expected.
Today, I increasingly encounter a different kind of discovery. I listen to a piece of music and immediately afterwards there are more tracks waiting that people with similar listening habits also enjoyed. I watch a video and the next one is already being offered to me, presumably because it might hold my attention. I search for a particular subject and soon afterwards notice it appearing again in different places. There is nothing inherently wrong with this. Quite the opposite, much of it is convenient and often genuinely helpful. I have found things this way that I would probably never have discovered otherwise. Yet at some point I became aware that convenience has a very quiet quality. It does not visibly take anything away from us. It simply makes it less and less necessary for us to choose for ourselves.
For me, that touches on something that goes far beyond technology. Taste often seems deeply personal. We say that we like a certain kind of music, prefer a particular style of clothing, favour certain books or find particular subjects interesting. We experience these preferences as an expression of who we are. But the more closely I look, the more I notice how fluid taste actually is. It changes through repetition, familiarity, experience, the people around us and whatever we regularly give our attention to. The more often I encounter something, the more familiar it can become. And familiarity can begin to feel surprisingly quickly like a preference of my own. That does not mean, for me, that all taste is externally controlled. It has simply made me more cautious about assuming that everything I like must have arisen entirely from within myself.
I have therefore often asked myself how many of my present interests really grew out of my own curiosity, and how many developed because certain things kept appearing in front of me. There is hardly a clear answer to that question. That is exactly what makes it interesting to me. I cannot simply draw a line and say that up to this point I am entirely myself and beyond it external influence begins. Life does not work like that anyway. We are constantly being influenced. By childhood, our surroundings, conversations, experiences, advertising, culture and people whose opinions matter to us. The algorithm did not invent influence. What feels new to me is its proximity. It now accompanies us through countless small moments of everyday life and learns from what we respond to. That creates a feedback loop that can feel remarkably personal. I see something because it may suit me, engage with it and then receive even more of the same. In this way, an interest can gradually become an environment.
What occupies me particularly is that this environment can feel pleasant. It confirms me. It shows me things whose tone, aesthetics, subjects and viewpoints feel familiar. At first, that feels good because there is less friction. At the same time, I have noticed in myself that curiosity needs something different from confirmation. It needs a certain distance from the familiar. It needs encounters that have not already been tailored to my previous preferences. I do not have to like everything I come across by chance. In fact, that sense of not liking something has become part of discovery for me again. If I enjoy everything I see, a strange suspicion eventually arises: perhaps I am no longer discovering the world at all, but only an increasingly refined version of what I have already been shown.
I remember wandering through a small flea market once without any particular intention. On one table lay books, records, old objects and things for which I had neither a name nor any obvious use. None of it had been selected for me. No one knew what I normally read, what music I liked or how long my gaze lingered on a particular object. I picked up an old book that I would probably never have found through a targeted search. Not because it was especially valuable, but because something about its design caught my attention. That moment has stayed with me because I recognised in it something I had begun to encounter less and less often in digital life. I did not know in advance what I was looking for. The interest only arose through the encounter itself.
For me, this touches on a deeper question about perception. How much space do I still give life before I begin sorting it in advance? If every spare moment can already be filled with content that fits my existing interests, very little emptiness remains. Yet over the years I have come to value precisely that emptiness more and more. It does not immediately provide an answer. A thought can arise there for which I previously had no search term. I can take a path without knowing where it will lead. I can listen to music that initially unsettles me, or spend time with an idea that does not fit my existing worldview. For me, this is not a rejection of modern technology. I use it myself and value many of its possibilities. It is more a question of whether, among all the recommendations, something within me is still allowed to begin on its own.
The longer I thought about it, the more I realised that taste is not only about consumption. It also influences how we perceive beauty, which people we find interesting, which ways of living seem desirable and which ideas of success, the body, spirituality or happiness become established within us. If I see certain images often enough, they can eventually begin to feel self-evident. I may no longer notice that I have absorbed something. It simply appears normal. That is where I find it particularly interesting to ask whether my inner sense still has time to respond before my thinking has already decided what is beautiful, important or worth wanting.
I have found that my own perception is often quieter than what is offered to me from outside. It has no notification, no thumbnail, no prompt telling me that something might be especially relevant. It tends to appear as an interest I can barely explain. My gaze lingers somewhere. A sentence moves something in me. A landscape draws me in even though it was never part of any plan. A conversation suddenly takes a direction no one could have predicted. Moments like these are difficult to optimise, and that is precisely why I find them so valuable. They remind me that my life does not have to consist entirely of things that already match my previous behaviour.
This is also where the subject connects, for me, with what I write about in Become Magical Again. Magic, as I understand it, does not mean withdrawing from the modern world or turning technology into an enemy. I associate it far more with the ability to encounter life directly again. To perceive something before I categorise it. To allow myself to be touched by something without immediately needing to know why. To find a path interesting even though no one has recommended it to me. In a world that is becoming increasingly good at predicting what might suit us, I experience this openness almost as a particular form of freedom. Not the freedom never to be influenced, but the freedom still to be surprised.
Since becoming aware of this, I also see recommendations differently. I do not have to reject them in order to take my own taste seriously. I can enjoy a discovery that suits me and still remember that beyond it lies an immeasurable amount that no one has preselected for me. Books, places, people, ideas, sounds and experiences for which my previous behaviour offers no clue at all. Perhaps something is waiting there that could change me. Not because it already suits me, but because I first have to encounter it before I can possibly know what it awakens in me.
Recently, I found myself standing in front of a shelf of books again and noticed my hand reaching for a title I had never seen before. I knew nothing about its reviews, recommendations or whether people with similar interests had enjoyed it. For a brief moment there was only the book, my hand and a curiosity I could hardly explain. I smiled because that ordinary little moment suddenly seemed larger than it really was. I had no idea whether I would like the book. And that felt surprisingly good.