Just reading through Shirky’s essay on Power Laws, Weblogs, and Inequality where he talks about the relationship between choice and inequality. Essentially, the more choices in a system where people have the freedom to choose whatever options they want, the more inequality (i.e. a minority of options getting the vast majority of choices). Or even more simply, many options + freedom to choose –> inequality. It’s a purely structural analysis with no focus on subjective thoughts, feelings, or experiences of life in a culture of choice. It focuses on the shape of the system that results with some small attention to the mechanisms that influence that shape.

This talk about increasing choices made me think a lot about the The Paradox of Choice. In that book, Barry Schwartz argues that the abundance of choices in our modern society actually decreases subjective happiness, especially for “maximizers” who are focused on always making the best choice possible. Simply, many options + freedom to choose –> unhappiness. A psychological and subjective account of life in a “culture of choice”.

I think this points to some real possible pitfalls in the future Web 2.0/long tail/etc. world. The inequality may or may not be a problem depending on your moral position but the unhappiness is of great import, especially to those of us working in the field of user experience. Are there ways that we can design systems to take advantage of the many choices people have while limiting the subjective feelings of unhappiness that seem to come along with them?