As happens every holiday (birthdays too) I have to buy presents for my wife Denise, our kids and various relatives.
There are millions of gift options but there are few that meet my high standards for quality gifts. Some examples from the John Glaser Gift Hall of Fame are below.
I typed “gifts for wife” into the Google search bar and I got web sites with titles such as 55 Gifts for Women 55+, Best Gifts for Wife 2024, 70 Gifts for Every Type of Wife[1] and 1424 Unique Gift Ideas for your Wife 2024. And those sites are the tip of an iceberg of thousands of sites.
The sites featured an overwhelming and diverse set of doodads and knick knacks. They all look the same and after a while you wonder why the maker of the item thought that there was even a remote chance that anyone would buy the item. But I guess if someone can give their sister a box of rocks (above) there is hope for yet another mug that says, “Best Grandma ever.”
After visiting a couple of sites, I begin to experience what is known as “choice overload” or the “paradox of choice.” When people are presented with too many options—whether in shopping, online platforms, or decision-making—they may feel overwhelmed, leading to stress, anxiety, indecision, or even numbness.
There are several symptoms of choice overload:
- Indecision: Struggling to make a choice or deferring decisions altogether.
[1] Which leads to the question – how many different types of wives are there?
Ask ChatGPT and you get the answer below.
- The concept of “types of wives” can vary widely based on cultural, social, and personal perspectives. Generally, one might categorize wives based on their roles, personalities, or lifestyles, such as traditional, modern, career-oriented, or supportive. However, it’s essential to recognize that every individual is unique and may not fit neatly into a specific category.
Not a very illuminating answer
- Fatigue or Numbness: Feeling emotionally drained and disengaged from the process.
- Anxiety: Worrying about making the “wrong” decision.
- Regret or Buyer’s Remorse: Even after deciding, people may regret their choice because they imagine other options might have been better.
- Avoidance Behavior: Some people opt to buy nothing or stick to old habits to avoid the stress of choice.
Fatigue, bordering on a coma, is the symptom I feel the most often
Why does choice overload happen?
- Too many similar options: When many choices are alike, evaluating them becomes exhausting.
- Fear of missing out (FOMO): A concern that choosing one option means losing out on the benefits of others.
- High expectations: The belief that with so many options available, the “perfect” product must exist.
- Decision fatigue: Mental energy depletes with each decision, reducing the ability to make choices effectively over time.
If you type “women’s clothes” in the amazon.com search engine you get to choose from 80,000 items. If you look for women’s books you get 30,000 choices. For tools, there are 100,000 choices. Overload is certain.
I still need to buy gifts but how do I avoid a coma? I asked ChatGPT to suggest gifts for a wife who is a grandmother and who is skilled with crafts. Unlike its response to the question about the different types of wives, I got a very thoughtful and comprehensive response to the request for gift ideas. I can see how AI generated answers will replace the search function of Google and Bing. The AI can be much more targeted and helpful and remove the redundancies that come from thousands of sites that all sell pretty much the same things. It may be a great way to avoid choice overload.
Generative artificial intelligence, of which ChatGPT is an example, has broken records for the shortest time needed for a digital offering to get to 1,000,000 users. In fairness, if you use ChatGPT the consequences of a bad experience are minimal. Not so if you get a bad house rental because Airbnb lets you down. Because of that, people will be more cautious to try Airbnb than to try ChatGPT. Plus people search every day but they don’t travel every day.
The progress that has been made in computer technology over the last 50 years has been amazing. If I look back to my late teens, I see that “computers” were slide rules, punch cards and teletypes, and specialized processors such as the computers that helped us land on the moon in 1969.
The progress that has been made in computer technology over the last 50 years has been amazing. If I look back to my late teens, I see that “computers” were slide rules, punch cards and teletypes, and specialized processors such as the computers that helped us land on the moon in 1969.
I know that a kid today would look at a slide rule and think, “You have got to be kidding me. How does that contraption work? Where do you plug it in?”
The slide rule (below on the left) could do a lot – logarithms, trigonometry and functions such as square roots. You could also solve problems quickly. There is an International Slide Rule Competition where kids compete to see who can develop the answer to a formula (such as the one below in the middle) the fastest.
I remember my father giving me my first slide rule. He was so proud – an engineer passing on a tool of his trade to his son.
On the right is the Apollo Guidance Computer (CAG). This computer guided the Apollo command and lunar modules on the first landing on the moon. Today’s iPhone has 2,000,000 times the amount of memory and is 1,600 times faster. There were 200 CAGs built each costing (in today’s dollars) $1,500,000. The average iPhone costs $800. Unbelievable gains in price/performance.