From the toy store grab-bags you opened with delight as a child to receiving a "free gift" with purchase at the department store, the excitement of unwrapping a present never gets old.
That's why Darius Kazemi, a game developer from Massachusetts, devised a program -- a "bot" if you will -- called "Random Shopper," that selects a gift for him every month on Amazon.com based on keywords he pre-selected pertaining to his interests.
The "gifts" cost Kazemi $50, so it's more like a surprise grab-bag he's sending himself. So far he's received a CD by Ãkos Rózmann, The Oxford History of World Cinema, and Noam Chomsky’s Cartesian Linguistics.
Kazemi told Boing Boing that he created the program because he enjoys the surprise of receiving an item in the mail weeks after he purchased it on backorder.
He documents his experience with the bot on his Tumblr account and recently faced some criticism that he's wasting money.
Kazemi, however, views the experiment as art.
"I am operating from a position of privilege where I can afford to spend money to make art," he writes. "But I would ask you to look at this as a hobby or a side project, rather than a waste of money, as though I’m burning $100 bills."
It seems people are never too old for surprises. Paid subscription services that mail subscribers a box filled with unknown goodies have become all the rage in the past year. There are curated boxes for men, women, foodies, dieters -- all varieties of tastes.
Would you let a bot buy a surprise gift for you every month? How else might this technology be used? Tell us in the comments.
Photo courtesy of iStockphoto, 26ISO
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