By Joe Queenan

I love algorithms. I have always relied on them to keep me apprised of products, events and services to improve my life. Algorithms alerted me to the superb walking shoes that helped cure my tendinitis and let me know that the Rolling Stones would be playing in Denver while I visited last June. I have algorithms to thank for many books I read, plays I attend and the foods that I eat. Without algorithms, I have felt, life itself would not be possible.

Then came the inexplicable heads up about the coming North Rockland Lacrosse Comedy Night Dinner.

I'll explain. In 1921, a celebrated Hungarian antiquarian bookseller began selling off individual pages of one of the 41 remaining Gutenberg Bibles. A lot of people thought this was scandalous. The bookseller thought it was a way to let ordinary people see Bible pages displayed around the world; it was also very profitable.

One of his relatives, the Australian journalist Michael Vistonay, has now published a book about this episode titled "Noble Fragments." He gave a talk about it last week at the wonderful Grolier Club in Manhattan, devoted to book collections of all stripes -- exactly the sort of thing I love to attend.

I downloaded my tickets to the talk from an online service I have always found reliable. But at the bottom of the page was a link to "Other Events You May Like." The first event was -- yes -- "The North Rockland Lacrosse Comedy Night Dinner."

Not only that: There were also promos for a saloon's "Sip and Paint Evening" and "Groovy World Presents Westchester County Comedy All-Stars."

These developments alarmed me. I couldn't figure out why any computer program would suggest that a person attending an Australian journalist's lecture about a distant Hungarian relative selling off rare Bible fragments would be interested in attending the Northern Rockland Lacrosse Comedy Night Dinner.

This is not to disparage Rockland County -- a fine locality that sits directly across the river from my town -- nor to suggest that a comedy dinner raising money for lacrosse players is anything but a worthy enterprise. But let's look at it in the opposite direction.

If a laugh-loving person downloading tickets to the North Rockland Lacrosse Comedy Night Dinner was told that they might also want to attend a lecture by an Australian journalist discussing a Bible that had been mutilated by the uncle of his grandfather's mysterious second wife, they might reach the same conclusion I did: Somebody's algorithms had gone on the fritz.

Equally disconcerting is the suggestion that I might shell out my hard-earned money to see Groovy World's cavalcade of comedy all-stars in action. Or that I might want to simultaneously paint and sip. It is all so philosophically and culturally dissonant with my tastes and values that it makes me think I have entered an electronic twilight zone where the algorithms targeting me no longer work.

In the past few days, I have noticed other algorithmic incoherence. StubHub identified a Billy Joel concert as an event I might like. But anyone who has monitored my online presence knows that I view Billy Joel as an emissary of Satan. Nor can I understand why Netflix has singled out a movie about an inexplicable Finnish meteorite shower as something right up my alley. I have no interest in Finns or meteorites.

The obvious conclusion is: I need to get my algorithms fixed. Either something is going kerflooey inside my devices, or this is a societywide breakdown and algorithms in general have come unmoored from public tastes. I don't even want to think where this might lead.

I do still recommend the Vistonay saga, though. It turns out the money from the sales of Gutenberg pages later helped the family get out of Hungary after World War II and open a famous deli in Sidney. Amazing story. No algorithms required.

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

April 04, 2025 23:00 ET (03:00 GMT)

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