To lead the life themselves, or to let the machine to make choices for us?

A few weeks ago, my friend and I came to a small outdoor party, sullenness, the atmosphere is good.

I was in charge of the DJ at the party. I had two kinds of implementations at the time:

1. Connect the Songza to the Sonos speaker, choose a scene of the current atmosphere, it can automatically list songs to play, do not need me to intervene.

2. I came to choose the songs according to the preferences of my friends, choosing the music that carried the memories of our past, the songs that they could not help humming.

The first method was too easy and convenient, but I used the second one.

I am glad to see my friends resonate with music and shake my body. Songza may also be able to choose good music, but in such a scenario, it is not meaningful to do it yourself.

Think of all the conveniences Google has brought to us (Google buys Songza, by the way), and we've seen Google's ambitious vision of making life simple and convenient. Nest Thermostat automatic control of indoor temperature and humidity; Google Maps let you no longer lose your way; Google's driverless cars mean you don't have to use them yourself; Google Now, a private secretarial presence, has stopped me from worrying about missing important things. Google's robot can be my good housekeeper.

Google's example is not deliberately looking for their stubble. I'm just trying to explain a problem.

The problem is that many of our life's intentions and choices are challenged and automated. Even in the venture world. A B-round financing meeting is full of cold numbers. Has the company broken out yet? How much is the user churn rate? How many active users and monthly active users? How many downloads per day? How did the Kickstarter? How much is the daily revenue? Come and go back and forth.

Intuition, team quality, vision, ambition, inspiration? Where did they go?

There's something else in the world besides Google's sophisticated algorithms and programs--like Tumblr, a big reason I like it is that I'm free to choose and define almost anything.

I'm free to change the subject, focus on the people I want to focus on (not the algorithm or edit), reprint or make a comment, and tell the author about my love for the TA article by hand-click (not a bunch of numbers on Google Analytics). The TUMBLR fully reflects my own intentions and choices.

I am not opposed to technological progress. Instead, I struggled for it. But I still hope that technology is also people and warmth, hope that in the code and algorithm, can see our own intentions, creativity and choice.