jeff ong's profile on Product Hunt

jeff ong

Design Technologist

#229179@jffngjffng.com

Activity 198 Following 85 Followers

Upvotes (3)

Apteo

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Docady

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Productivity

Joined on May 19th, 2015

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The site is beautiful and the experience of using it is nice, no doubt. Hats off to the designer(s). My critique is of the concept: what is the value of curating book recommendations from people whose influence is already outsized in our society? The resulting recommendations are biased towards "successful" (i.e. materially wealthy) people. I believe that reading is about expanding perspective, and in its current state this product promotes a rather specific worldview. For example, two of the top four fiction book recommendations are Ayn Rand novels. Ayn Rand's influence on early Silicon Valley is notorious: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al.... Regardless of what you think of Ayn Rand's work, the idea that one ought to read two of her novels before all other fiction ever written, speaks volumes about the perspectives being represented in this product. I would expand and work on making the recommendations inclusive of a broader range of perspectives, because the site design itself is quite lovely.

on Good Books

12mo ago

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