Two Years of Living Randomly | Max Hawkins | TEDxVienna

Summary

The speaker, a former software engineer at Google, recounts his journey of embracing randomness to break free from the predictability of his life. Inspired by a research paper on predictive analytics, he creates an app that randomly selects places to visit, leading to unexpected adventures in San Francisco. This experiment in serendipity expands to other aspects of his life, including diet, music, and social events. The speaker's experiment with living in different cities chosen randomly by a computer for two to three months each, exposes him to diverse cultures and challenges the notion of personal preference and algorithmic control. He encourages viewers to be experimental in their interactions with algorithms to avoid being controlled by them.

Takeaways

• 🕗 The speaker used to have a meticulously planned life in San Francisco, waking up at 7 a.m., going to their favorite coffee shop, and then cycling to work at Google as a software engineer.
• 🔮 A research paper on predictive analytics inspired the speaker to question how algorithms could predict personal choices, leading to a sense of unease about the predictability of their life.
• 🤖 To counteract the predictability, the speaker created an app that randomly selects a destination from Google Maps, books an Uber, and takes them there, introducing an element of surprise to their routine.
• 🏥 An amusing anecdote from the app took the speaker to the San Francisco General Hospital's psychiatric emergency center, highlighting the unexpected nature of the app's choices.
• 🌐 The speaker expanded on the concept of randomness by developing various 'random' generators for different aspects of life, including YouTube videos, schedules, diets, and more.
• 🎉 The speaker attended random Facebook events through a generator, leading to experiences in various communities and revealing the richness of life outside their usual social circles.
• 🌍 Embracing a freelance career allowed the speaker to let a computer randomly decide where to live next, leading to a nomadic lifestyle across different cities around the world.
• 📈 Living in different cities for short periods and engaging in random activities provided insights into the local culture and the influence of social structures on personal choices.
• 🧐 The speaker realized that the perceived randomness was not entirely free from bias, as the choices were still influenced by the existing social and cultural contexts.
• 💭 The speaker encourages viewers to experiment with algorithms, suggesting that blindly following defaults can lead to a loss of autonomy and potential manipulation.
• 📝 The talk concludes without a neat summary, inviting the audience to reflect on the implications of algorithmic control in their lives and the importance of making conscious choices.

Q & A

What was the speaker's routine like when they lived in San Francisco?

The speaker had a very structured routine. They would wake up at 7 a.m., go to their favorite coffee shop, ride their bicycle to work at Google as a software engineer, and constantly optimize their schedule to get to work faster.

What was the concept of the computer science research paper that the speaker read?

The paper discussed predictive analytics, stating that by using someone's GPS trace from the past month and feeding it into a machine learning algorithm, one could predict with high accuracy where they would be the following day.

What inspired the speaker to create an app that chooses random places to visit?

The speaker was intrigued and somewhat disturbed by the predictive analytics paper, which made them think about how algorithms could predict their choices. They wanted to break free from such predictions and experience randomness in their life.

How does the app the speaker created work?

The app selects a random place from Google Maps in San Francisco, calls an Uber to the user's location, and directs the driver to take the user to that random place without revealing the destination to the user until they arrive.

What was the speaker's experience when they first used the app with their friend Kelly?

The app took them to the psychiatric emergency center of San Francisco General Hospital, which they found both funny and exhilarating as it was a place they would never have chosen to visit.

How did the speaker's use of the app change their perception of San Francisco?

The speaker discovered an entire side of San Francisco they had been ignoring due to their preferences. They visited random places like museums, grocery stores, bars, and bowling alleys, gaining a new appreciation for the city's diversity.

What other experiments involving randomness did the speaker create?

The speaker created a variety of random generators, including a random YouTube video generator, a random schedule generator, a random diet club, a random tattoo generator, a random Spotify playlist, a random podcast, and a printer that prints out random suggestions of things to do.

What was the purpose of the random Facebook event generator the speaker mentioned?

The random Facebook event generator allowed the speaker to choose a public Facebook event happening in a city at random, making their plans for the night and exposing them to different communities and events they wouldn't normally attend.

How did the speaker's approach to living change after transitioning to freelance work?

The speaker wrote a program to randomly select a city for them to live in based on their budget. They started living in various cities around the world for two to three months at a time, experiencing different cultures and lifestyles.

What revelation did the speaker have while attending a yoga class in Mumbai?

The speaker realized that even though they thought they were experiencing randomness, there were patterns emerging, such as attending multiple yoga classes in a week. This led them to understand that their choices were influenced by the social structures and customs of the cities they were in.

What is the speaker's final thought on the role of algorithms in our lives?

The speaker encourages being experimental when interacting with algorithms to avoid being controlled by them. They suggest that following defaults and preferences can lead to a loss of freedom and exploration of diverse experiences.