Steve (Austria)
Non-Average Profiling
We are living in a world where pretty much everything is adjusted to the average human being. Of course, the average person doesn't exist, and where it does, it is an exception in itself (something that actually isn't average at all).



For example, the furniture you buy will be designed for people of average size. When you look for something on the internet, you are presented with search options that the average surfer has been looking for. When looking at reviews on the internet, you are presented with average reviews of average taste. And so on.



Also, when dealing with companies, you are routinely treated as someone with average ignorance: The help system you are confronted with will routinely assume that you don't have a real problem but are just unable to read the instructions, as it seems like most people can't. Most password systems will assume that your password is just a plain word that you wrote on a post-it on your desktop for everyone to see, and therefore force you to change it regularly.



Oddly, all of this is happening in a world in which we are being profiled and tagged all the time, so our privacy is down the toilet anyway. Wouldn't it be nice if the technology that steals our privacy to make a quick buck could at least be employed to situations where it is truly useful? How about creating profiles that can actually help avoid all the crap that wasn't actually every meant for people like US?

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