I agree that we humans filter ourselves into a bubble, but the recommendation systems are designed to discourage you from doing different. It is in their best interests for you to be as predictable as possible. Getting their recommendation algorithms to be supremely intelligent and nailing your interests is the hard way, meeting the user in the middle by reducing the set and complexity of his interests is the other easier way.
I'm not railing against recommendation engines. They just rely on fundamental assumptions about the nature of our interests that I'm not sure are right. I'd be interested to see a recommendation engine that had an explicitly different goal in mind than predicting your interests (e.g. an in-built bias to encourage you to eat healthier when giving you restaurant recommendations).
Now that's an interesting idea and it seems like a logical next step - first to predict the behavior and then trying to implement a latter of behavior changing steps to ultimately modify it.
But on the other hand I have to admit that the current status seems still highly rudimentary. The service most likely with the most data on me is Amazon and despite an almost 10 year customer history their suggestions are still nowhere near what I am looking for.
I'm not railing against recommendation engines. They just rely on fundamental assumptions about the nature of our interests that I'm not sure are right. I'd be interested to see a recommendation engine that had an explicitly different goal in mind than predicting your interests (e.g. an in-built bias to encourage you to eat healthier when giving you restaurant recommendations).