Personalized personalization
Had a thesis advisor meeting today, and a topic of interest which came out in the course of the discussion was an idea of personalization of personalized information.
I’m describing this idea as allowing people to personalize an object with whatever information they want to know about that object. So, not only can you get information that is specific to your circumstances, but it’s information you have selected for delivery.
This all started with the idea of having your name written on an egg, similar to how the expiration date is printed on eggs. What if your egg told you where it came from, how many you’ve eaten this week, or was your entry into the egg lottery?
There is perhaps a binary opposition between conspicuous consumption and personalization of personalized content. The former relies on common symbols for the conspicuous part of the consumption, while the latter is all about unique information. Unless there is a value inherent to uniqueness, or the unique information is expressed in a common symbol-system, then I’m not sure there’s a relationship between the two. Just an observation.