{"text":[[{"start":5.68,"text":"Last week’s column, with the aid of a pink romantasy bookshop, discussed the way a healthy economy offers “disciplined pluralism”. Discipline means that sooner or later, uneconomic ideas fail. Pluralism means that many different ideas are attempted, the economy endlessly producing new experiments."}],[{"start":23.94,"text":"It’s fair to ask, though, how much pluralism does the modern economy really give us? A foolish question, in some ways. In his modern classic The Origin of Wealth (2006) the economist and complexity theorist Eric Beinhocker estimated that at least 10 billion distinct products and services were available in a major urban economy such as New York City, compared with a few hundred available to a traditional hunter-gatherer society. The variety is staggering. Some would say it is overwhelming."}],[{"start":54.68,"text":"And yet, isn’t it a familiar complaint that everywhere seems to look the same? Walk down a shopping street in Manchester or London, Munich or Copenhagen, and the similarities are as striking as the differences. Big brands are everywhere, and not just the classics such as McDonald’s and Starbucks. Newer chains such as Five Guys and Blank Street seem to spread with remarkable speed."}],[{"start":77.04,"text":"The independent offerings are a bit samey, too: hipster cafés increasingly seem assembled from the same flat-pack kit. Even the cornucopia of digital content is filtered through a few platforms: Audible for audiobooks, Spotify for music, YouTube for video and Kindle for ebooks."}],[{"start":94.44,"text":"Maybe we shouldn’t be complaining about this. Andy Warhol celebrated it: “You know that the President drinks Coca-Cola, Liz Taylor drinks Coca-Cola, and just think, you can drink Coca-Cola, too . . . All the Cokes are the same and all the Cokes are good.”"}],[{"start":108.8,"text":"Still, “all the Cokes are the same” is hardly a manifestation of the glorious pluralism I celebrated last week. Does this apparent monoculture reflect a corporate conspiracy, or a flattening of our own tastes, or is there some more subtle process at work?"}],[{"start":123.04,"text":"One answer comes from data scientist Lauren Leek, who was recently flat-hunting in The Hague. “Every flat I scrolled, in a city I barely know, I already recognised: the same refinished parquet, matte-black taps, rewilded pot plant on the same windowsill,” she wrote. “Same with the café near every place I’ve lived, flat white and exposed brick and oat milk assumed.”"}],[{"start":146.46,"text":"It was as though “everywhere is converging on the same few templates, and I’m exactly who those templates were optimised for”. One possibility is that Leek is in her own perfectly crafted filter bubble, shown exactly what she wants to rent, to buy, to drink, and happy enough with the results, even if they are a little unsettling. If she stepped away from what her phone was recommending, she’d see plenty of very different offerings."}],[{"start":169.8,"text":"But perhaps the personalisation filter is not just shaping what Leek sees, but shaping the world? Leek has in mind a simple algorithm: “predict what people want, show them more of it, watch what they pick, update”. That could describe YouTube or Spotify, but the physical world, too: if Gail’s or Pret A Manger runs an algorithm to decide where to locate, and the algorithm spits out a range of streets that look like they should have a Gail’s or Pret on them, then it’s easy to see how everywhere starts to seem the same."}],[{"start":198.44,"text":"This process can produce a kind of converging feedback loop: algorithmic predictions smooth out the world. This then makes it easier for the algorithm to predict what people will do. And the better the algorithm’s prediction, the more similar everything becomes."}],[{"start":212.22,"text":"The simplest form of this model failure would be a YouTube autoplay that directs you to a slightly more popular cousin of the video you’ve just watched. After that, in turn, a slightly more popular choice again. Leave the loop running and eventually every autoplay is an endlessly looping Baby Shark, the cultural black hole from whose gravitational pull nothing can escape."}],[{"start":232.88,"text":"(YouTube, of course, tries to avoid this. There is a countervailing risk, in which every recommendation becomes edgier and more extreme. These are tough technical problems; it is not always easy to be an algorithmic overlord.)"}],[{"start":246.8,"text":"Ultimately, though, we should not reflexively blame the algorithm. Algorithms can be changed if they are not producing the desired results. The deeper trade-off here is an ancient one: should businesses stick with a proven formula for success, at the risk of missing out on something even better? Or explore the unknown?"}],[{"start":263.8,"text":"It is not just entrepreneurs and managers who need to wrestle with this “explore-exploit” trade-off. We all do. Pop into a McDonald’s or a Blank Street, buy a ticket for yet another Marvel movie, and you’re almost guaranteed a certain minimum quality."}],[{"start":278.94,"text":"But take a risk — an independent bistro, an art-house movie, the local wine — and you might get something that is better than good. Or worse. The less willing we are to take a risk, the more safe options we are likely to be offered."}],[{"start":292.96,"text":"The trade-off depends on individual taste, of course, but it also depends on some well-understood variables. The time-horizon matters. If you’re visiting somewhere new for three days and you find a great restaurant, it might be a good idea to stick with it. If you’re in town for months — or years — then it’s worth casting the net more widely, even though you’ll likely chew through some grim menus."}],[{"start":314.34,"text":"The cost of experimentation matters, too. Aspiring writers can try all sorts of things out on Substack without asking publishers, readers or themselves to take the risk involved in a full-fledged book. The Dan Browns and Sarah J Maases of the world might prefer to stick with writing, printing and selling in a form that readers demonstrably want to buy."}],[{"start":333.9,"text":"If the variety of the modern economy really has diminished, that would be because the trade-off between exploring new options and exploiting old recipes has changed, either for businesses or for us as consumers. Why might that be?"}],[{"start":346.86,"text":"Surely not because experimentation is more expensive. And not because time-horizons are short, given that real interest rates even now remain lower than they were in the 1980s and 1990s."}],[{"start":357.88,"text":"Maybe the question is based on a false premise, then. Maybe the modern economy is more varied than ever."}],[{"start":363.66,"text":"I hope so. Because if not, the most plausible explanation for being surrounded by familiar brand names and cookie-cutter stylings is simply that we are being given exactly what we want. Maybe we, like Warhol, are delighted that all the Cokes are the same, and all the Cokes are good."}],[{"start":381.04,"text":"Find out about our latest stories first — follow FT Weekend Magazine on X and FT Weekend on Instagram"}],[{"start":390.88,"text":""}]],"url":"https://audio.ftcn.net.cn/album/a_1789631153_3403.mp3"}