Non-algorithmic media can surprise us into discovering unknown preferences.

Evidence

More important, none of these stations ever play anything like “the Jenny mix.” Instead they will occasionally play a song that I like even more than my archetypal song, in a different way and for reasons I can’t really pinpoint. The songs fall into genres I normally say I dislike, including Top 40. (It was only on KBLX that I heard Toni Braxton’s Top 40 hit “Long as I Live,” which I listened to obsessively for weeks afterward.) Especially with something as intuitively appealing or unappealing as music, to acknowledge that there’s something I didn’t know I liked is to be surprised not only by the song but by myself. — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing, 470

Categorization

• XREF: Ties the algorithmic-narrowing thesis to the neighborly care argument: both resist instrumental selection; both constitute a richer self-world. Useful for the reader’s defense of Odell against withdrawal.