On hyper-personalisation, and what we trade away for it.
A colleague recently told me about the AI ecosystem he's built for himself. Coding agents, testing agents, a whole setup that runs largely on its own. Alongside all of that, almost as a byproduct, the agents generate hours and hours of personalised podcasts, narrating what they've done as they've done it. This has just become a normal part of how he consumes content.
Isn't that amazing? Content produced entirely on demand, tailored precisely to what one person wants to know, at pretty much no cost. It's a continuation of the general trend of hyper-personalisation we've seen over the last couple of decades, since we all got our own smart devices.
But there's a cost to that too. When everyone's feeds, online streaming, playlists, and podcasts are built entirely around their own tastes, the shared reference points start to disappear. As a personal example, this 2026 World Cup has been quite nostalgic for the conversations it has generated, similar to the old water cooler or cup of tea conversations you used to have about what was on TV last night. These overlaps created common ground where everyone had roughly the same starting point.
That common ground matters for more than just conversation starters. Shared experience is part of how trust and culture get built, at work and in wider society. It's the unplanned overlap, the thing you didn't specifically choose but ended up experiencing alongside everyone else, that often creates the strongest connections. As personalisation gets better and more pervasive, I wonder what happens to that. I don't think personalisation is wrong. I just think it's worth being deliberate about keeping some things shared.
I don't know what the answer is here. Maybe nothing changes and this just becomes another way people consume content alongside everything else. Or maybe over time we notice the gaps where the shared moments used to be. Either way, it's something I'm being mindful of, and making sure I continually seek out those shared experiences.