What if there was an app that…
This is the concept for Lauren Miller‘s book, Free to Fall. Long after Google and Apple are gone a new tech company comes in and creates Lux, and app that makes decisions for you. Lux makes sure you are making the right decisions that will lead to the utmost happiness. The idea completely fascinated me in a way I didn’t expect. It is a very now idea as technology grows and grows but is it a good idea to have an app that made all you decisions?
I started thinking about what I would want an app to decide for me and came up with a number of ideas. Instead of sharing all of mine I asked a few friends that read and loved Lauren’s book to tell me what they would want decided:
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Let me say first off that my love for Free To Fall knows no bounds. I think it was the first real book that I was completely obsessed with. I loved it so much that for a while it was even my profile picture on Twitter. It may still be my profile picture for the YA Indulgences Facebook page.
Okay, now that I got that out of the way. I was so happy when Andi asked me if I could quickly participate in this post! Free To Fall did an amazing job with showing how easy it is to let an app decide things for you. This is especially great if you are an indecisive person, as I sometimes can be.
I could think of several things I would like technology to decide for me, what job to take, what clothes to buy, what kind of blog post to make or what book to choose to read.
I think if I could only pick one thing though, I would have technology decide if I should pursue relationships or friendships or not. It’s easy for relationships and friendships to become complicated with life circumstances and people changing. I don’t think I’m the only one that has struggled with whether or not a relationship is still worth fighting for. In Free To Fall, the main character, Rory follows the apps order on when danger is coming and where to go to prevent it. I think I would like that kind of decision for an app with relationships. I know it could be hard to relinquish control or at least take into an account, a technological decision, but if the app truly did know best, as is expressed in Free To Fall, I think I would take the risk.
I must admit that I don’t really like the idea of technology making decisions for me; it’s nice to feel a sense of control in the choices I make. However, one thing I would appreciate technology helping me with is determining whether I need to go to the doctor or not. You know you’ve been there, sitting on WebMD, wondering if you’re experiencing a random pain or if you have a tumor. It would be great to have some sort of smart tech that could truly detect just how serious your symptoms are, whether you should go to the doctor, and what kind of doctor you should see. No more hypochondria and no more wasted co-pays!
I loved Free to Fall, and though is definitely a cautionary tale, I also think there’s a lot of appeal for smart technology that makes decisions for you. I recently started wearing a Fitbit, and I dearly wish that it could track the calories I eat, just by me wearing it, instead of me having to write everything down manually in a tracker. I just put food in my mouth and it can read the calorie content through my skin. Then, it could tell me how much I should be eating, and offer suggestions of what I should eat – and how much I should exercise that become more tailored to my diet, and how fast my metabolism processes, the longer I wear it. That would save me a lot of time and effort. I don’t think it’s a device I’d want forever, but it would certainly be helpful!
Andi: Andi’s ABCs
One of the many thoughts that came to my head when deciding what I would want an app to choose for me was lunch. Everyday I sit at my desk at work and know that lunch time is coming. I know that the dreaded part of my day is upon me and I will have to do something I hate…decide what I want to eat. I work right in downtown Boston so I have a ton of option. But I have also been working in the same area for almost 19 years. Everything is just the same and I never know what I want to have. I wish I could have an app that would decide what I want to eat based on my past likes and dislikes of food. That right there would make my life so much simpler.
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I don’t know about you guys but I can easily see how this decision making and parallel life ideas could really work together. Maybe we should get Lauren Miller to write a book combining them both. One half is the decisions the app makes and the other half is the decisions it doesn’t. Hmmm…
Huge thanks to Lauren, Amy and Amber for helping me out. I’m so happy you loved Free to Fall like I did.
What decision would you want an app to make for you? Have you read Free to Fall yet?
On May 2nd, Sarah J. Maas’s final book in the A Court of Thorns and Roses series, A Court of Wings and Ruin, will be released. 
