ABSTRACT In a time when personalised newsfeeds and automated recommendations foreclose the exposure people have to political, cultural and social encounters outside their existing predilections, it is more important than ever to think about the ways we come across the unexpected, online and off. This essay accordingly explores the shape of serendipity in a time so bent on personalisation and findability that our techniques of discovery have attained great consequence for the affectability of that which we discover. Serendipity is typically understood as an instrument of invention: the unanticipated but fortuitous incidents that inspire a wise insight or innovation. In this view, the serendipitous is not a boon in itself, but only as it leads to something else. Such thinking, I will argue, neglects that serendipity is fundamentally a mode of encounter, and one that can be as affective and autotelic as it is cognitive and instrumental.

中文翻译：

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作为文化技术的意外

摘要 在个性化新闻源和自动推荐排除人们在现有偏好之外接触政治、文化和社会接触的时代，思考我们在网上和线下遇到意外的方式比以往任何时候都更加重要。因此，本文探讨了在一个如此专注于个性化和可发现性的时代，我们的发现技术对我们发现的事物的可感性产生了重大影响。机缘巧合通常被理解为一种发明工具：意料之外但偶然的事件激发了明智的洞察力或创新。在这种观点中，偶然性本身并不是一种恩惠，而只是因为它导致了其他事情。这样的想法，我会争辩说，