Читать книгу Designing Agentive Technology - Christopher Noessel - Страница 35

If you use iTunes, there are two aspects that are agentive: the smart playlist and the Follow feature.

Regular playlists are dumb collections of songs. (No, no, your taste in music is impeccable. I mean the software logic of this type of list is not smart.) You can edit the list manually, but the list will stay like that until you change it again.

Smart playlists, on the other hand, let you select the features of the song you want in the playlist. Then the playlist acts as an agent when your music collection changes to see if any of the new songs fit the playlist’s definition. If so, Live Updating automatically adds it in.

As long as I’ve got songs tagged with beats-per-minute, this definition will create a cardio playlist of songs that will keep me charged and that I like. A small thing, for sure, but it lets me describe my interests and lets the agentive tech do the rest.

The Follow feature is another aspect. Visit an artist page in iTunes, and you’ll find a Follow control. (At the time of writing you have to be subscribed to Apple Music, and then it appears in a drop-down list under a blue button at the right-hand side of the page.) Click it, and hey, now you’re following that artist.

iTunes doesn’t bother to explain what the actual consequences are for hitting this toggle, but nonetheless, a quick Google search reveals that they will send you an email when any of the recording artists you’re following has a new release available.

A better agent might recognize that I have an interest in more than just music releases. I might be interested in knowing when that artist is on tour near me (or near where I might be traveling), or has an interview, or releases a new video online, but that task might befit the Google Alerts agent better. However, interests aren’t just limited to digital goods, either. They can be physical.