Solving the problem of revealing what we don’t know we want

I’ve talked a lot about the very important distinction between the things we know we want and the things we don’t know we want.  There are thousands of products and pieces of information out there that would greatly benefit me and I should want them.  But I don’t want them, because I don’t know about them.  An example of such a thing would be a product that I recently found out about that for 30 bucks and 15 minutes of install time allows me to control how much water goes down the toilet when I flush (allowing me to use a lot for solid waste and little for liquid waste).  I don’t have one yet, but I want one because I know it can save me a lot of money and help the planet.  A month ago though, I still would want one if I knew about it, but I didn’t until someone delivered an important piece of information about it to me.

This response to the Edge 2009 question “What Will Change Everything” describes a fundamental shift that would come about if computers began to be able to guess the things we want but don’t know we want and then revealed that information to us and gave us the opportunity to get the things we now knew we wanted.