“Human Algorithm takes the averages produced by AI as its starting point, then transforms the perspectives learned from bookstores, libraries, and small intellectual spaces into everyday experiments for readers. Through a two-week cycle of reading, questioning, and recording, it builds a ‘personal context’—a form of humanities journalism designed for the AI age.”
By Kim Youna
AI promises us “optimization.”
No wasted time, fewer mistakes, and choices designed to minimize regret. By analyzing our past decisions, we can predict our future satisfaction. The power of this technology is both impressive and undeniably useful. Thanks to it, we may avoid bad movies, disappointing restaurants, and tedious books.
Yet life cannot be explained by optimization alone. What moves us most deeply is often not the perfect choice, but an unexpected encounter — something we were not looking for, something we did not even realize we needed until we suddenly longed for it. These small detours quietly reshape the paths of our lives.
This series is an attempt to design space for such “chance.”
Bookstores and libraries around the world arrange books in ways that differ from algorithms. They do not rely on rankings or ratings, but on the intuition and interpretation of curators, placing words and ideas side by side in ways that appear inefficient — yet from those arrangements, surprising connections and new meanings emerge.
We do not compete with AI. We collaborate with it. We seek harmony between what AI does well and what humans do best. Science finds patterns, but life is often experienced through its exceptions. This column will be a small laboratory for observing and recording those exceptions: careful curation, accidental discoveries, and intentional collisions. That is why this series is called Human Algorithm.
Every two weeks, we will visit a single space, learn its philosophy, and bring it back into our daily lives. We will read, reflect, experiment, and record. We are not chasing grand transformations — only the hope that one afternoon might be lived a little differently.
So let us begin.
Slowly. Gently. Welcoming chance.
Week 1 — Reflection
A distinctive place somewhere in the world
One perspective was discovered there
Questions it asks of us
Week 2 — Practice
A simple experiment
Small actions for daily life
A method for recording the results
About the Author
Kim Youna is the author of Notes of a Bookstore Traveler. She works in communications at an artificial intelligence company, bridging technology and human language. She writes about libraries and bookstores as spaces for thinking about life. She is currently leading the Inner Mapping project, which helps individuals archive and interpret their everyday lives as personal histories.
Korean version available here.
